AMHERST
SUMMER 2016
G FIRE Come al N I H ong TC A C an d the tch wa
m sum er’s
l st ate gre
ig h
In the field and lab, biologist Sarah Sander ’06 works to unravel the mystery of fireflies.
t sho w
IN THIS ISSUE
16 Summer 2016 Volume 68 No. 4
Home
From the chair of the College’s board of trustees, some thoughts on the protest in Frost Library last fall. / By Cullen Murphy ’74
23 Catching Fire
Fireflies are quintessential visuals of summer. Not content to simply enjoy their light, Sarah Sander ’06 and her team plan to decipher the firefly genome. / By Geoffrey Giller ’10
32 Might and Right in the Pioneer Valley
In an Amherst classroom, a good relativist learns that political philosophy is an urgent—and fun— adventure. / By Susannah Black ’99
Lindsey Echelbarger ’74 opened a museum in an old Safeway building. It showcases artists from an often overlooked U.S. region.
Photograph by TOM MARKS
ONLINE amherst.edu/magazine
3 College Row A $1 million prize will help the College to close “invisible opportunity gaps”; catching up with early female grads; four ways to make sense of U.S. politics; publishing Arabic voices; and more 12 The Big Picture Clover field 14 Point of View A college in common 37 Beyond Campus RELIGION / Reform Rabbi Hara Person ’86 led a rewrite of the High Holiday prayer book EDUCATION / Helping teens who don’t like school LAW / Chaka Laguerre ’08 will clerk for a U.N. judge SOCIAL MEDIA/ How online interactions stigmatize weight MUSEUMS / Seattle is not known for its art. One collector aims to change that 43 Amherst Creates NONFICTION / The Nazi Hunters, by Andrew Nagorski ’69 INTERVIEW / Dan Cluchey ’08 on how writing a novel differs from writing a speech MEMOIR / Catherine Newman ’90’s Catastrophic Happiness TELEVISION / Susannah Grant ’84 takes on the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings THEATER / David Rimmer ’71 wrote a play about an Amhersttype reunion 50 Creating Connections 56 Classes 120 In Memory 128 Amherst Made The father of photojournalism
Video l Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes moderated a reunion panel on “LIVING AND DEGENERATIVE DISEASE” with ’66 classmates Aaron Latham (Stahl’s husband), Evan Maurer, John Vine and Bruce Leopold. Watch that talk and 22 others from reunion 2016.
l Twenty-one Amherst students and faculty members have won TOP NATIONAL AWARDS to continue their work in the arts, humanities and sciences. Learn more about these 2016 recipients. More News
l NORM JONES arrived in July as the College’s chief diversity
and inclusion officer, bringing “experience and sophistication,” President Martin said, to the “work of building an intellectual community that embraces diversity of people and points of view.”
l Two weeks after graduation, MEGHAN MCDONOUGH ’16 and Sarah Jordan ’16 headed to Buenos Aires to film a 20-minute documentary about artist-activists who are working to combat violent crimes against women in Argentina.
l Making good on a pledge to expand its commitment to student diversity, the College hosted NATIVE AMERICAN HIGH-SCHOOLERS for a weeklong summit that aims to help students get into college. Students met with admission officers, essay specialists and others.
“
W
e expect gay rights to emerge in wealthier areas, but we’ve also seen progress in not-so-rich countries, like Ecuador, and no progress in some higher-income places.”
† PROF. JAVIER CORRALES on LGBT rights in Latin America. Page 6
EDITOR
Emily Gold Boutilier (413) 542-8275 magazine@amherst. edu
MAGAZINE ADVISORY COMMITTEE
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Ann Hallock ’89 Darcy Jacobs ’87 Ron Lieber ’93 Meredith Rollins ’93
Amherst welcomes letters from its readers. Please send them to magazine@amherst. edu or Amherst Magazine, PO Box 5000, Amherst, MA 01002. Letters must be 300 words or fewer and should address the content in the magazine.
ALUMNI EDITOR
Betsy Cannon Smith ’84 (413) 542-2031 DESIGN DIRECTOR
Ronn Campisi ASSISTANT EDITOR
Katherine Duke ’05
COVER
Sarah Sander ’06 in July in western New York. Composite photograph by Geoffrey Giller ’10. Photos on p. 23, 24 and 31 are also composites.
Amherst (USPS 024-280) is published quarterly by Amherst College at Amherst, Massachusetts 01002-5000, and is sent free to all alumni. Periodicals postage paid at Amherst, Massachusetts 01002-5000 and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Please send Form 3579 to Amherst, AC # 2220, PO Box 5000, Amherst College, Amherst, MA 01002-5000.
VOICES
BRIA’S GOODBYE George Bria’s farewell from the class of ’38 (class notes, Spring 2016) was perhaps the finest thing I have ever read in Amherst. Very inspirational coming from a centenarian, demonstrating a strength of character we can all aspire to. JOE OSBORN ’81 San Rafael, Calif. ALGEBRA: NOT A WASTE In the Spring 2016 issue I enjoyed the article about Andrew Hacker ’51 (“Is Algebra a Waste of Time?”) My response is “No,” but I agree it needs to be taught properly. I was a mathematics major and have fond memories of Robert Breusch (mentioned in the article) and two other longtime professors (Bailey Brown and Atherton Sprague) who inspired me to pursue a mathematics teaching career. I have taught mathematics for 52 years. I believe algebra should be taught as a language. An example: The equation 3x + 7 = 19 can be read, “Triple a number, add 7 and obtain 19. What is the number?” The solution process undoes the operations (multiplication and addition) used to create it: “Take 19, subtract 7 (obtaining 12), then divide by 3 (obtaining 4). The desired number is 4.” An analogy might be putting on a sock, then a shoe and then tying the laces. To undo, untie the EXPLORING CUBA, laces, remove the shoe and AT A TIME then take off the sock. I have developed and taught practical courses in finance and statistics to young students. Tedious computations were made relatively easy using spreadsheets—and the construction of simple spreadsheet commands is heavily algebraic and requires an understanding of the algebraic order of operations. I have witnessed excellent algebra teaching. I have also observed teachers who don’t appreciate algebra and have taught the subject as a series of techniques to be memorized. Admittedly, regulations and requirements sometimes make it difficult for good teachers to make algebra interesting and exciting for students. However, practical applications
ONE DIAMOND
should be introduced in every course and every topic should be examined for its usefulness. And it should always be remembered that algebra is a language. SANDERSON M. SMITH ’60, ED.D. Carpinteria, Calif. t The Spring cover story on the alumni baseball trip asked readers: What’s your Cuba story? Here’s one about baseball in Havana. EL JEFE & THE CAMEL BUS We went to Havana in 1999 when the Orioles played the Cuban national baseball team. I was with ESPN and Dan Duquette ’80 was the Red Sox GM. Havana was a time capsule of Spanish architecture, revolutionary iconography and cars from the 1950s. Besides the cars, the roads contained bicycles, mopeds, horsedrawn carts and the “camel bus,” with people riding all over the outside. Our group was escorted wherever we went by undercover Cuban security, but you could jump in a cab and get wherever you wanted to go. Some of us drank mojitos in the Floridita, visited Hemingway’s house and smoked handmade cigars from street-corner vendors. We visited Esquina Caliente, the place in Parque Central where Cubans congregate to talk baseball. Fidel Castro watched the entire game wearing army fatigues, a game that included long relief by José Contreras, who later left Cuba for MLB. After the game Castro changed into a business suit and hosted a party at the Palacio de la Revolución. We entered via a single-file reception line where Castro met and spoke (through an interpreter) to every person who attended. All of our transactions had to be done using American cash. To pay expenses for a TV crew of nearly 100 people, we carried thousands of dollars in duffel bags. Our hotel was modern and wellappointed. Cell service was excellent but expensive. You could always sense the presence of the official escort, but the everyday Cubans we encountered were SPRING 2016
A month ahead of Obama, a group of Amherst baseball alumni came together in Cuba for a unique barnstorming tour. This was no weak, fantasy-camp team. They could play.
c1_Amherst_SP16.indd c1
2 Amherst Summer 2016
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open and friendly. They were knowledgeable about U.S. current affairs and appreciative of the business we brought them. When we tipped workers $50 each for loading and unloading our gear at the docks, they broke down in tears. MIKE RYAN ’81 Avon, Conn. THE MASCOT: INFURIATED Those who know me have heard this credo: “An informed public is the foundation of freedom.” So you’ll understand why I believe all graduates of the College should be infuriated with the way President Carolyn Martin and Board of Trustees Chairman Cullen Murphy ’74 handled their communications with alumni after the Lord Jeff imbroglio first appeared on our radar screen in 2015, when panelists (a student, an alumnus and faculty members) at a reunion seminar announced that Lord Jeff, without discussion or even a modern-day trial, was guilty of genocide. As I have confirmed with editor Emily Boutilier, not a word of this was published in Amherst or in any College e-newsletter until The New York Times’ Jess Bidgood broke the story to a national audience on Nov. 1, 2015. After that, there was a frantic College effort to play PR catch-up—most notably in the poorly executed “Mascot Discussion Page.” What we learned later was that President Martin and Mr. Murphy did nothing to encourage the late Paul Ruxin ’65 and D.T. MacNaughton ’65 to bring their mock trial presentation of Lord Jeff to campus. As Mr. Murphy noted in a worldwide webcast in January, which I watched, “history only takes you so far.” (To make your own judgment on Mr. Murphy’s enthusiasm for bringing Amherst students and faculty another view of Lord Jeff, go to about the 24th minute of the webcast: amherst.edu/alumni/ biddycullenconversation2016.) Until this letter, Amherst magazine a 127 MORE ON THE MASCOT The alumni-student mascot committee will kick off the selection process for a new mascot this fall. For updates, please see amherst.edu/alumni/mascot.
9 Catching up with three of the first nine women to graduate from Amherst
NEWS AND VIEWS FROM CAMPUS
College Row
The newest alumni are 456 men and women from 25 countries. “Question everything,” urged their class speaker.
| Amherst Summer 2016 | Photograph by Maria Stenzel
6 A $1 million prize will help close “invisible opportunity gaps.”
3
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PASSAGES U In her annual commencement address, President Biddy Martin told the newest alumni that these times require the best of their liberal arts educations. Describing the liberal arts as “a leading source of resistance to antirational forces of manipulated fear and hatred” she urged new graduates to use their education as antidotes to prejudice and exclusion. “The broad range of liberal arts disciplines makes reason and understanding, freedom and generosity their ground and their purpose. This form of education,” she said, “offers an unrivaled opportunity to absorb the ideas and the values
Education as
ANTIDOTE 456 students became alumni on May 22. essential not only to personal success but also to creating the world we say we want—the opposite of where our most visceral instincts take us when we’re afraid.” At Amherst, Martin continued, “we recognize that talent and promise cross
l ONLINE Photos, video, audio and text of speeches: www.amherst.edu/magazine
all social and economic boundaries and that high-quality educational opportunities should, too. We also realize, as research shows, that we come to better conclusions, that we are smarter, when different life experiences and points of view are taken into account.” Prior to Martin’s remarks, elected class speaker Darienne Masishi Madlala ’16 recalled a quote she had heard at a conference: “The person who always asks ‘how’ will always have a job. But the person who always asks ‘why’ will always be their boss.” She encouraged her classmates to “question everything.” CAROLINE J. HANNA
Top Honors Amherst awarded honorary doctorates to six people. CHRIS BOHJALIAN ’82
The author of 18 books, he has seen his work translated into more than 30 languages. His novels regularly appear on bestseller lists. He has won widespread acclaim for his narratives, which cover topics including midwifery, human trafficking and the Armenian Genocide. WILLIAM BURNS
THIS PAGE: SHANA SURECK. OPPOSITE: MARIA STENZEL (TOP LEFT, MIDDLE THREE, BOTTOM LEFT), JANNA JOASSAINTE (TOP RIGHT), SURECK (BOTTOM CENTER)
He is pesident of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former U.S. deputy secretary of state. His accomplishments as a career diplomat included helping to end Libya’s weapons program and working on a historic interim nuclear agreement with Iranian leaders. INGER DAMON ’84
Director of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she was CDC incident manager for the Ebola response in West Africa. SANDRA FABER
She is an astronomer and astrophysicist noted for the Faber-Jackson relation, which is the first known structural scaling law for galaxies. Her work has also uncovered irregularities in the expansion of the universe caused by gravity from superclusters of galaxies. KIRK JOHNSON ’82
As the Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History, he oversees the largest collection within the Smithsonian. He led a 2011 excavation in Snowmass Village, Colo.,
that unearthed more than 5,400 mammoth, mastodon and other iceage animal bones. SARA LAWRENCE-LIGHTFOOT
She is a sociologist and educator who studies the culture of schools, the ecology of education and the relationship between human development and social change. She pioneered an approach to social science known as portraiture.
FACTS
OTHER HONOREES
ABOUT THE GRADS
Medal for Eminent Service KELLY L. CLOSE ’90 Honorary Marshal BROOKE KAMIN RAPAPORT ’84 Obed Finch Slingerland Memorial Prize MILTON FELIPE RICO BECERRA ’16 Woods-Travis Prize ALEXANDER COREY VEGA ’16 ROBERT J. GARVEY: President Martin read a tribute and gave a cane to the Commencement mainstay and retiring sheriff of Hampshire County, who has opened and closed Amherst graduations for decades. Phebe and Zephaniah Swift Moore Awards, given to high school teachers nominated by members of the graduating class: DAWN GAFA, Hazel Park (Mich.) High School ROBERT GERVER, North Shore High School, Glen Head, N.Y. WILLIAM KAHN, Brooklyn (N.Y.) Technical High School
456 25
Number of graduates
Countries represented Economics
MostDeclared Majors
English Math Political Science Psychology
62
First in their families to graduate from college
53
Have at least one parent who attended Amherst
15
Have grandparents who attended Amherst Bain & Co. associate consultant
Sampling of graduates’ new job titles
ESPN assistant editor Facebook software engineer K·Coe Isom sustainability intern Mercy Volunteer Corps patient advocate/nursing assistant Reader to Reader mentor support coordinator
Summer 2016 Amherst 5
COLLEGE ROW
Amherst Recognized with
$1 MILLION COOKE PRIZE The College will use it to close “invisible opportunity gaps.” FINANCIAL AID U Hailing the College as “a national leader in expanding access to college for lowincome students,” the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation named Amherst the 2016 recipient of a prize that will be used to close what President Biddy Martin calls “invisible opportunity gaps.” In a New York Times column about the award, Frank Bruni described Amherst as an “exemplar” and “way, way ahead of most of its peers” in enrolling low-income students. The $1 million Cooke Prize for Equity in Educational Excellence is awarded each year to a selective college or university with a strong record of admitting, supporting and graduating outstanding lowincome students. “The generosity of our alumni, the priorities set by
Where the money will go
former President Tony Marx and the commitment of every constituency of the College have allowed Amherst to provide opportunity to many more students from lowincome backgrounds,” said President Biddy Martin at the time of the May announcement. “Our goal is to identify and nourish talent wherever it exists. It exists everywhere.” Amherst has a need-blind admission process for all students, including transfer applicants and international students. A total of 58 percent of Amherst students get needbased financial aid. Among other milestones,
Amherst’s percentage of low-income students receiving federal Pell Grants has risen from about 15 percent in 2006–07 to nearly 25 percent in 2015–16. The College has also increased enrollment of community college transfer students—many coming from low-income families—from zero or one annually to 12 to 15 each year. “We are focused now on sustaining that commitment,” Martin says, “and ensuring that all students can take full advantage of the transformative experiences that a liberal arts education offers.” C.J.H.
At least half of the $1 million will fund summer programs for low-income Amherst students, including research with faculty, field study, arts training and internships, Martin says. The money will also be used to recruit, train and pay students to serve as financial aid peer advisers for their transfer and first-generation peers, supplementing the work of the financial aid office. Because about half of the students remaining on campus during school breaks are from low-income families, Martin says, Amherst will also create more programs to reduce their sense of isolation during those times.
p
S
Q&A
AME-SEX MARRIAGE IS NOW How do the new laws differ / Javier Corrales, Dwight W. Morrow 1895 legal in Uruguay, Argentina, from those in the U.S.? SameProfessor of Political Science / Brazil, Colombia, Mexico City sex marriage became law in the and several Mexican states. U.S. when public opinion was LGBT Rights in Latin America turning more tolerant. In many How is this shift a surprise? We expect gay rights to emerge cases in Latin America, the legal in wealthier areas, but we’ve also changes came first. Latin America seen progress in not-so-rich countries like Ecuador, which proves that you don’t need to wait until society changes. has civil unions, and no progress in some higher-income What hasn’t changed? Progress is very uneven. Also, places, like Venezuela and several Caribbean nations. with many barriers into the labor market for LGBT We also expect gay rights to emerge where secularpeople, they are disproportionately exposed to ism is strong. That helps us understand Uruguay. poverty and crime. Add in homophobia and transHowever, we’ve also seen expansion in some phobia, and violence manifests. Ten days before very religious places, like Colombia. Orlando there was a similar episode in Mexico.
l ONLINE The full Q&A with Corrales, who co-directs the LGBT Rights in the Americas Timeline: amherst.edu/magazine
Illustration, top, by James Yang
Hearing
u Biddy Martin
FROM STUDENTS For the new Amherst Voices video series, President Biddy Martin sat down with graduating members of the class of 2016. Here’s some of what they told her.
Pritchard in the Role of Frost The “History Program” video features Michael Harmon ’16 alongside William H. Pritchard ’53, the Henry Clay Folger Professor of English, Emeritus. Martin asks Harmon why he initiated the recent Amherst History Series, a sequence of six talks in which Pritchard and other longtime faculty members shared their insights into the College’s past. Pritchard tells Martin his story from the 1950s of chauffeuring Robert Frost (“Here we are on Route 2, with the Gray Eminence next to me, making conversation and keeping my eyes on the road”). Harmon reveals that hearing an earlier recording of that story is what inspired him to get to know Pritchard and to “dig into the history of this school.” He says he now thinks of Pritchard the way Pritchard thought of Frost.
MARCUS DEMAIO
What They’ll Miss In the “Senior Perspectives” video, Rachael Abernethy ’16 and Juan Gabriel Delgado Montes ’16 talk about their experiences with mentoring, including through the College’s alumni-student program Pathways. Mercedes MacAlpine ’16 describes how she founded an Amherst cheerleading squad to remind her fellow students of their potential: “Whether it’s the
Quite the Gamble
Michael Harmon ’16
Andrew Knox ’16, Rachel Nghe ’16, Servet Bayimli ’16
Mercedes MacAlpine ’16, Juan Gabriel Delgado Montes ’16, Rachael Abernethy ’16 Students talked with the president about, among other things, starting a cheerleading squad, speaking five languages and risking an entire grade on one question.
work, whether it’s being better people, whether it’s connecting with one another or just loving each other—we’re here because we can.” All three reflect on their roles in, and hopes for, last fall’s Amherst Uprising. The
l ONLINE Watch the videos: amherst.edu/amherst-story/president/amherst-voices
president asks all the seniors what they’ll miss about Amherst when they move on to graduate programs and jobs. Delgado Montes says, “I’m going to miss home. Going to another home doesn’t mean this is no longer my home.”
In the “Senior Insights” video, Servet Bayimli ’16 explains to Martin why he’s learned to speak five languages, and Rachel Nghe ’16 praises “Race and American Politics” as “one of the first classes where I felt like my own experiences mattered, where I was able to talk about how my identity as an AsianAmerican related to the political atmosphere of the class, of this world, of America.” The course coincided with Nghe’s work with the College’s Multicultural Resource Center and Asian Students Association. “Diversity work is not something I had looked into, not something I had expected myself to do,” she says. “Looking outside of the box of what you thought you were good at and trying out all of these different things is, I think, quintessential to the Amherst experience.” Andrew Knox ’16 tells Martin how the late Professor Nasser Hussain offered his Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought students the option of risking their entire grade on a single question of his choosing. A correct answer would earn a guaranteed A in his course; a wrong answer would mean a D. “I’m the first and only student to have ever accepted his offer,” says Knox. Did the risk pay off ? Watch the video series to find out. KATHERINE DUKE ’05 Summer 2016 Amherst 7
COLLEGE ROW
Begging to Be
MADE WHOLE The Mead Art Museum asked contemporary artists to complete half-missing works of art. EXHIBITION U What does a curator do with a half-missing work of art? That was the challenge facing Bradley Bailey, former curatorial fellow at the College’s Mead Art Museum. The museum has a celebrated collection of Japanese prints, the gift of William T. Green, a man of modest means who purchased Japanese prints voraciously, often in combined lots. As a result, nearly 200 of the 4,000 prints in the Green Collection are “orphaned,” fragmentary panels that Bailey says are “like an incomplete sentence begging to be made whole.” So, in the spirit of the Surrealist game known as “Exquisite Corpse,” Bailey asked contemporary artists to extend some of these prints into full compositions. The result: a three-month Mead exhibition. The Exquisite Corpse game dates to 1925, when Surrealist friends in Paris took turns writing a fragment of a sentence that the next person, without seeing the previous contribution, would complete. The game eventually inspired art and theories regarded as touchstones of Surrealism. Bailey, now associate curator of Asian art at the Ackland Art Museum at the University
Left: Sweaty American (2016), a digital print by Ely Kim. Right: After the Bath, from an 1895 series by Yōshū Chikanobu
Left: A Picnic Party at Hagidera (1700s), by Katsukawa Shunchō. Right: A Record of Modern-Day Customs (2015), by Paul Binnie
Left: Akira Yamaguchi’s Muppet: Frantically Busy (2016). Right: a Kabuki actor by Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III) (1859)
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gave the artists complete freedom to create anything they could imagine, “as long as their creations were connected to the lines of the original print.” Each took a different approach. Scottish artist Paul Binnie completed two polychrome woodblock prints. American artist Ely Kim responded with a pair of digital prints. The UK-based design team Studio Swine created a mixed-media sculpture. American photographer Gregory Vershbow first drew an image, colored it in Photoshop and made prints of it. “I then photographed the prints (along with a reproduction of the original) on expired, hand-processed 4x5 color-positive film,” he says. Japanese artist Akira Yamaguchi contributed ink-and-watercolor drawings. He said it was his first time creating a work with the prerequisite that it would be displayed with the original. “I tried to judge the personality of the earlier picture, and from there, link my piece iconographically,” he says, so that “a slight sense of a leap between the works would emerge.” The exhibition will travel to the Ackland Museum this fall. SHEILA FLAHERTY-JONES
TOP / LEFT: PURCHASE WITH CHARLES H. MORGAN FINE ARTS FUND, 2016.06, COURTESY ELY KIM. RIGHT: FROM THE SERIES CHIYODA, INNER PALACE, GIFT OF WILLIAM GREEN, 2005.173. MIDDLE / LEFT: POLYCHROME WOODBLOCK PRINT, GIFT OF WILLIAM GREEN, 1998.17. RIGHT: POLYCHROME WOODBLOCK PRINT, COURTESY PAUL BINNIE. BOTTOM / LEFT: COURTESY AKIRA YAMAGUCHI AND MIZUMA ART GALLERY, TOKYO. RIGHT: KABUKI ACTOR KAWARAZAKI GONJURŌ I AS TEKOMAI MASUKICHI, GIFT OF WILLIAM GREEN, 2005.273, FROM THE PLAY THE WEAVING TOGETHER OF THE SUN, MOON, AND STARS AT DAY AND AT NIGHT.
HISTORY LESSON / APRIL 3, 1949
BEFORE MASTERPIECE THEATRE Back when TV was new, households around the country tuned in to watch Amherst students perform Shakespeare.
BEING
Unafraid
MARIA STENZEL (WOMEN); AMHERST ARCHIVES (SHAKESPEARE)
Catching up with three of the first nine women to graduate from Amherst LESSONS U Three of the first nine women to graduate from Amherst—Ruth Kremen ’76, Wendy Mantel ’76 and Dorothy Schatzkin-Higgins ’76—returned in May to talk about their lives on campus and how lessons from Amherst carry over today. The reunion-weekend panel touched on such topics as social life on campus (Kremen befriended young female professors), to male classmates who “thought all women woke up looking like Smithies,” Schatzkin-Higgins said, to the intellectual inquisitiveness they found in class. They talked about sexism they faced or saw others face, and on feminism then and Top, from now. Schatzkin-Higgins exleft: Kremen, Schatzkin-Higgins pressed dismay, for example, and Mantel. All that mothers today are “fightcame to Amherst ing the same mommy wars first as exchange that I fought. I never thought students. we would have turned that over to the next generation.” Mantel said she learned at Amherst “not only how to think analytically but how to not be afraid,” which helped her as an advertising executive and, later, in her new career as a certified professional coach. “It was astonishing,” Kremen noted, “how open the conversation was in seminars and how deep people were willing to probe into theories and texts. I credit Amherst with what I see in myself today, which is great intellectual curiosity. I did not come from a family like that. Amherst brought me there and it’s a huge part of my life.” EMILY GOLD BOUTILIER
If you were watching television on the evening of April 3, 1949, chances are you were choosing between one of two shows: WATV’s broadcast of a western film or NBC’s broadcast of Julius Caesar, performed by Amherst students at the Folger Shakespeare Library. U.S. households with TVs had only those two viewing options that Sunday, when the Amherst College Masquers—a student dramatic society—made television history with NBC’s broadcast to 17 cities. It was the first nationally televised performance of a full Shakespeare play.
Arranged by NBC Vice President Charles R. Denney ’33, the play featured some 50 students in the cast and crew. The director was Professor of Theater and Dramatic Arts F. Curtis Canfield ’25. The Washington Post, Life and Time covered the broadcast, which drew viewers from, for example, more than 40 percent of TV-owning households in the New York area. And a Chicago Tribune article on the show reported, “1) Shakespeare makes a high order of television program, and 2) Amherst knows how to train actors.” RACHEL ROGOL
l ONLINE Watch their talk: amherst.edu/magazine
Summer 2016 Amherst 9
COLLEGE ROW
K
EXPERT ADVICE / BY Jonathan Obert, assistant professor of political science /
How to Make Sense of U.S. Politics
THE WIRE (TV SERIES): The whole series (but especially season 4) is, to my mind, the best fictionalized representation of local politics in U.S. history. In particular, the ways in which various constituencies (the city police force, organized criminal gangs, real estate development agencies, school administrators) in urban Baltimore in the early 2000s shape and mimic each other while forcing often uncomfortable and seemingly irrational outcomes make for both a fascinating narrative and a trenchant analysis of organizational decision-making.
O
BERT WILL TEACH AN INTRODUCtory course this fall on understanding American politics. How can alumni deepen their own understanding this election season? Here, he recommends four sources. THE MONKEY CAGE (BLOG): This group blog—administered by eminent political scientists and hosted at The Washington Post—is a great place to keep up to date on cutting-edge research written with a general audience in mind.
SOUTHERN POLITICS IN STATE AND NATION (BY V.O. KEY, 1949): If you read only one book on U.S. politics, let it be this one. It tackles questions of federalism, party realignment, voting behavior and about every other theoretical and empirical question in American politics research with creativity and clarity. A bona fide classic.
BACKSTORY (PODCAST): American politics means American history, and nobody does a better job of exploring and explaining the nuances of this history than the crew at Backstory. Try episodes on Supreme Court politics (“Above the Fray?”) or the long history of terrorism (“Fear Tactics”).
TWO ALUMNI JOIN BOARD The new trustees are an ’82 psychologist and a ’76 lawyer. LEADERS U This summer Kimberlyn Leary ’82 and Paul Smith ’76, P’09 began six-year terms on the College’s board of trustees. Andrew J. Nussbaum ’85, a trustee since 2010, was appointed to serve a second six-year term. Leary is an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she directs the Enabling Change program. She is also executive director of policy outreach at McLean Hospital-Partners Healthcare and a faculty affiliate at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law. As a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow, she served as an adviser to the White House Council on Women and Girls. She completed an extension of her fellowship at the White House Office of Management and Budget in the Health Division’s public health branch, where 10 Amherst Summer 2016
Leary served as an adviser to the White House Council on Women and Girls. Smith has argued 19 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
she served as the division lead on the Flint water crisis. At Amherst she majored in psychology, graduated magna cum laude and was a member of Sigma Xi honor society. She lives in Cambridge, Mass., and is married to Richard Hale Shaw. Smith chairs the Appellate and Su-
preme Court Practice at the law firm of Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. He has handled many cases involving civil rights and civil liberties, notably in the areas of free speech, voting rights and gay rights. He has argued 19 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark gay-rights case Lawrence v. Texas and Brown v. EMA, which established the First Amendment rights of video game producers. A political science major, Smith graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He began his career as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. He has received multiple awards for his work promoting civil rights and civil liberties, including the 2010 Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association. Amherst awarded him an honorary degree in 2015. Smith is married to Michael Dennis and has two children, Samuel and Scott ’09. E.G.B. Illustrations by Anthony Russo
PUBLISHING
Arabic Voices With its new issue, Amherst’s literary magazine brings once-inaccessible writing to an English-speaking audience. WRITING U From a landfill on the outskirts of Marrakech to the palace of a fictional Egyptian prince, the latest issue of Amherst’s literary magazine, The Common, offers a glimpse into places around the world, both real and imagined. But what sets the latest issue apart isn’t the settings of the stories; it’s the authors.
ACKER: PAUL FRANZ; BUSTANI: THORAYA EL-RAYYES; ARTWORKS: COURTESY OF THE COMMON AND THE ARTISTS
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Titled Tajdeed (Renewal): Contemporary Arabic Stories in Translation, the issue features stories by 26 emerging and established writers from 15 Middle Eastern countries. “When people think of Arabic writing, they often think of poetry. They often think, ‘It must be political,’” says Jennifer Acker ’00, Jennifer The Common’s Acker editor-in-chief. “This issue aims to show that neither is always the case, by publishing translated Hisham fiction and works Bustani by Arabic writers that aren’t necessarily political.” Fewer than 1 percent of English translations have come from the Middle East since 2012, says Acker, who conceived the issue as a rare avenue for Arabic writers to publish in the United States, and also as a way to bring Middle Eastern contemporary literature to English-speaking audiences. “There are so few avenues of discovery for Arabic voices,” Acker says. “This
volume can make a real difference in raising awareness of the exciting and varied stories being written right now across the Middle East.” Tajdeed includes short stories from such celebrated authors as Hassan Blasim (from Iraq) and Mohamed Makhzangi (from Egypt), alongside new voices never before published in English. With introductions by Egyptian writer Youssef Rakha and Cairo-based journalist M. Lynx Qualey, Tajdeed offers fresh insight into themes and forms of contemporary Arabic writing. For instance, Lebanese author Mona Merhi explores the suburbs of Cairo in “Haphazardia,” while Abderrazak Boukebba, an emerging writer from Algeria, reflects on the process of writing in “The Death Shroud: Nine Stories and a Single Set of Characters.” “With so much uncertainty in our future, today’s new Arabic writing is more related
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1 The issue also featured Arabic art, including Cold Breezes, by Reem Yassouf of Syria.
2 In the Mood for Love, by Tunisian photographer Ons Ghimagi
3 017, by Jordanian painter, 3
to raising questions than giving answers,” says Jordanian author Hisham Bustani, who co-edited the publication with Acker and contributed a story about a suicidal painter. The issue earned praise from Arabic media, including the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, which said it “excels in transmitting the voice of Arabic writing to the United States.” Al-Mamarr in Egypt described it as “a volume that
photographer and sculptor Bader Mahasneh
breaks the naïve stereotypes about the Arab World.” The Kuwaiti Al-Qabas hailed it as “a quantum leap for Arabic literature available in translation for U.S. audiences.” “We are immensely proud of the attention Tajdeed has brought to Arabic writing,” Acker says, “and we’re eager to continue publishing work from this underappreciated, yet brilliant, part of the world.” R.R. Summer 2016 Amherst 11
COLLEGE ROW
THE BIG PICTURE SUMMER AT AMHERST, for students who stay on campus, brings with it time for exploring the natural beauty of surrounding towns. Students can hike up mountains, search out swimming holes and, in this case, relax in a nearby clover field.
e Maria Stenzel
e If you would like a reprint of this photo, email magazine@amherst.edu with your name and address, and we will send you a complimentary copy.
POINT OF VIEW
A COLLEGE
in Common By Mark R. Rigg ’89
TO ANYONE UNFAMILIAR WITH CHURCH POLITICS, THE GATHto talk about church committees he had served on. That was a ering at a Lutheran church near Reading, Pa., looked like nothway of sharing his past. We both liked to talk about our congreing more than a social event. It was, in fact, a job interview. gation’s building campaign: it was how we spoke of hope and The hundred or so people I was meeting over coffee and cookthe future we would leave for others. If conversation lagged, I ies would return the next morning, listen to me preach and would turn us back to Amherst. He would tell me what it was then vote on whether to call me as their pastor. And because like before all the “new” buildings had been built. I would try to I wanted the job, I emphasized my local credentials: my years shock him with my stories of being on the first-ever coed hall. teaching at a nearby prep school, my wife’s degree from Penn Bob died April 15, 2016, with his family around him. He recState, my seminary work in Philadelphia. ognized me until just the last visit or two. I But one conversation was different. A sehad time to pray with him; I had time to tell nior couple approached, and the man said, him I loved him. His funeral was a gift in For a minister “You and I have a college in common. I went many ways, but it was hard to get through, and a member to Amherst right after the war.” The couple especially the part of my sermon that touched of his flock, a were Robert Snedeker ’49 and his wife, Grace. on our common ground: The war was the Second World War. And that “Bob and I loved to talk about our shared shared Amherst short conversation was the start of a gracious connection to Amherst. Our experiences were experience relationship. wildly different: he studied economics and forged an unusual The war had been key in shaping Bob’s life. mathematics at an all-male college; I focused friendship. He was an infantryman in Europe, and he on English and religion at a school recently fought on the front line. One day his unit was gone coed. Bob was a war veteran who had struggling to retake a German town. A mortar seen the world; I was a naïve teenager who struck a building as he came around its corner. He raised his felt Amherst to be a million miles from his northern New Jersey arm to protect his face, and shrapnel badly mangled his left home. We graduated a full 40 years apart. And yet, here in a hand. He made his way off the line and, ultimately, back to the congregation and community that is endlessly focused on Penn States and a Purple Heart. Only after many surgeries was he State, our love for ‘the Fairest College’ was a real bond, and able to keep the hand, and the injury pained him for the rest of whenever I wore a touch of purple (such as my socks today), his life. Bob knew why.” When Bob told me about the day he was injured, he called it I concluded by speaking of “that day when Christ grasps his second birthday. He saw it not as a tragedy, but as the event Bob—wounded hand in wounded hand.” His widow and chilthat gave him a new life. I marveled at this attitude, and in the dren nodded. years to come I would call him every March 1 and wish him a That might have been the end of this part of the story. But a happy second birthday. It was in little gestures like this that our month after Bob’s funeral a package from his daughter arrived friendship grew. We enjoyed sitting together over soup suppers at my home. My children know that I cry easily, but even so my in the church’s fellowship hall, talking theology. He attended sudden gasp and my tears drew them to my side. Inside was my adult Sunday school class and teased me for sounding like Bob’s varsity letter, framed. such a young man. That purple A now hangs in my office at the church. Often I In his last few years, as his health declined, I visited him in am busy and walk past it without looking. But just as often I am his room at The Highlands retirement community. Often Grace quiet and my eyes settle upon it. I think of Bob, that dear man. I was there, and the three of us would chat and banter before think of the college that shaped us both. And I remember what sharing communion. Bob and I had favorite topics. He liked a privilege it was to have been his pastor. MARK R. RIGG ’89 is pastor of Advent Lutheran Church in West Lawn, Pa.
14 SUMMER 2016 / AMHERST
Illustration by Scott Bakal
Home SOME THOUGHTS ON THE P R OT E ST I N F R O ST L I B R A RY L A ST FA L L
By Cullen Murphy, class of 1974 and chair of the College’s board of trustees
It was also a time when the country was hearing reports from a number of campuses—the University of Missouri, Yale University, Ithaca College, Oberlin College—about episodes involving confrontations over race. Those episodes, driven by issues specific to each campus as well as by a long series of tragic events nationwide, were getting significant attention and had become the subject of heated debate. In places as varied as Fortune and Rolling Stone, Politico and The Federalist, the focus of commentary moved beyond particular incidents to broader reflections on race and higher education. Two essays from around this time that I recall as well worth reading, though markedly different in outlook, are the ones by Hua Hsu in The New Yorker (“The Year of the Imaginary College Student”) and by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine (“Can We Start Taking Political Correctness Seriously Now?”).
The events of last November that go by the name Amherst Uprising— centrally, a sit-in at the library by students of color and many others that lasted for several days—were not something that many saw coming. The students involved were as surprised as anyone by the turn the events took. The name itself came late. It has stuck, a shorthand that allows for fast and easy reference—too easy and too fast, probably. It doesn’t describe and it certainly doesn’t explain. The events came and went so quickly that they were hard to assess even if one was close to them, as most people with an interest in Amherst were not. Media accounts were haphazard or superficial, and often inaccurate. Even on campus there is no single point of view about what happened: appreciation, skepticism, understanding, perplexity—you will encounter all of these and more. Many alumni were surprised and taken aback.
The liberal arts are about emphasizing what we share as human beings. The irony, but also the gift, is that one of the things we share is the reality of difference.
This may be a good time, with the perspective that comes from distance, to review what happened during those three or four days last fall. There’s a granular way of looking at the protest—the origins, the actions, the reactions, the outcomes—and in recent months I’ve talked at length about all these things with scores of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. There’s also another way to look at the protest, one that considers the larger impulse behind it: the challenge of fostering community in an environment of diversity—the kind of community where every member thrives; where topics such as race, class, and gender are addressed openly; where strangers do not stay strangers for long.
Students at Amherst were in touch with friends at the affected institutions and at many other schools. To talk about some of these episodes, and to show support for protestors elsewhere, three black Amherst women planned a sit-in to be held on the main floor of the Robert Frost Library, inviting other students and members of the community to stop by starting at 1 p.m. The Facebook post that announced the sit-in opened with a picture of a poster bearing the words “Do You Care?” The gathering did not have a name and it was not expected to last for more than an hour. Professors remember getting apologetic emails from students at around lunchtime on Thursday saying they were going to swing by the library briefly on the way to class, and might be a few minutes late. In fact, many stayed longer than intended and others, from all parts of the student body, arrived throughout the afternoon. Faculty came too, along with deans and other staff members. Word of the gathering continued to spread. By mid-afternoon there were several hundred people in the library—sitting cross-legged in the lobby, squatting on the
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OVEMBER 12 WAS A TYPICAL FALL DAY, CLEAR AND dry and slightly warmer than crisp. It was a Thursday. The previous weekend, the women’s volleyball team had beaten Connecticut College in the NESCAC quarterfinals. Men’s cross-country had won the ECAC championship. The Amherst-Williams football game lay just a couple days ahead. Students were attending the usual array of morning classes—“Exploring the Cosmos,” “Developmental Psychology,” “Nazi Germany,” “Macroeconomics,” “Writing the Past.” Information sessions were on the books for anyone seeking internships in the health and tech professions. The military veterans’ creative-writing group was set to meet.
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stairs, perched on the bannisters. What drew them was the fact that, on a campus where academic commitments are heavy, where everyone has too much to do, where expressions of vulnerability are infrequently volunteered, and where communication across social boundaries is sometimes constrained by awkwardness or diffidence, students were talking candidly and often emotionally about their experiences involving race. The event had started with the sharing of news from other campuses, and with the broader subject of race and the college experience. But the emphasis soon shifted. One person who was present on that initial day recalled, “The first statements were about what was happening at other schools. ‘We want to make sure that people understand. We want to be in solidarity with them.’ And then the direction changed—someone saying, ‘Let’s not pretend that the things that happen here at Amherst College aren’t similar to the things that are happening in other places.’ And then someone else saying, ‘No, no, we don’t have campus police chasing us around.’ But people began talking about how we treat each other, about things that happen in classrooms, things that happen in residence halls, things that happen in lots of other places on campus.” Students talked about their lives at Amherst but also their lives before and outside of Amherst. They said out loud what they had perhaps never said before, or had said individually to one another or to trusted advisers but not in such a large setting. They talked about the relatively small number of faces like theirs among the ranks of faculty and staff. About feeling excluded at social events. About distinctions of class that are all too visible when seen from one side but may be given little thought by those on the other. About casual remarks and behaviors that cause anger and pain, and whose residue inexorably accumulates. About the widespread ignorance of the path that many students of color travel as they make their way to Amherst. About legacies of personal history that other students can scarcely imagine and could never infer. About the exhaustion sometimes involved in juggling college life and family needs at home. About the utter disorientation that may occur when arriving at an idyllic spot with alien folkways that others take for granted. About having few people to talk with about any of this, and classmates who may be unaware that these issues loom as large as they do. I won’t relate the particular stories; they are not my stories to tell. You can get a sampling of the substance, as well as reaction to these accounts, in the “Comments” section that follows the relevant news reporting in the Amherst Student’s online archive. Those who were there recalled an atmosphere in the library of close listening and deep emotion. “Communal intimacy” was the phrase one student chose to describe it. Quickly, an audience of predominantly black students and Latino and Latina students grew to include students of every background.
One common theme among students of color was the exhausting experience, as one of them told me, of being both “invisible and hyper-visible.” She went on, “It’s this idea that you have to speak for people. You have to represent your people. And that’s tiring. It’s really tiring to feel like you have to be the voice of someone. It also feels like you have no margin for error.” Another theme was what seemed to many the patchwork nature of the social fabric on campus. Thinking back on the conversations in the library, a young woman who was among the leaders of the sit-in later said, “One of the things that we talked about is the question of forming community. You’re bringing in students from all these different backgrounds, and they don’t know how to interact with each other or talk or create or just love. They’re afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. I have that fear as well.
A common theme among students of color who spoke in the library was the exhausting experience, as one of them put it, of being both “invisible and hyper-visible.”
Which further isolates respective groups and calcifies these sorts of cliques. It’s the elephant in the room.” The convergence in the library would continue through the weekend. There was debate and disagreement. The gathering was always peaceful. People arrived and left according to their schedules and inclinations. Many stayed overnight. Food was brought in by various campus offices and organizations, including the library and the Office of Student Affairs. Frost continued to function as a library at all times—there was never any disruption of operations. The satirical Amherst Muck Rake live-blogged what was happening there in its customary way. (“4:10 p.m.: Prospective students wander into Frost. Put off by large class size.”) Campuswide, classes went on as usual; students took breaks from the library to attend them. On Saturday, delegates from Purple Pride, the cheerleading team for home events—some of whom were involved in the events at Frost—traveled to Williamstown to support the Amherst football team. Many students think back on those long hours of testimony and conversation in the library as what one of them called the spiritual core of the weekend. In conversation,
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they come back repeatedly to the eye-opening intensity of the experience, whatever their views about specific issues. It was a moment for the Amherst community alone. No outside media was there to witness or report it. The aspect that attracted much wider attention occurred toward evening on Thursday, when some of the students, with the support and participation of many of those gathered, created a website, gave the sit-in a name and issued a statement and a set of demands that quickly went viral. This was the statement that called on the president of the College and the chair of the board of trustees to apologize for a number of things, including an “institutional legacy” of racism, colonialism, white supremacy, and xenophobia. It also called on the president of the College to condemn the unofficial mascot, Lord Jeffery Amherst, as racist, and to issue a statement that the College did not tolerate the actions of those who had hung posters that were deemed racially insensitive. There were eight other bullet points. Acceptance of the demands was to be initiated within 48 hours and completed within a week. President Martin, who was in Washington, D.C., when the sit-in began, and had been about to head to Japan on College business, instead returned to campus on Thursday evening to speak with the students in Frost. She listened as the demands were read and she promised a response. She did not accept the demands or the deadlines. What President Martin and the students did do was remain intensively engaged with one another throughout the next three days. On their own initiative, participants in the sit-in took a hard look at the original statement, began to discuss their own misgivings about it, and undertook the process of drafting something very different. On Sunday at around noon, President Martin spoke again to the students in the library, reading a response that was also sent to the entire Amherst community—students, faculty, staff, and alumni. She acknowledged that students, in their conversations with one another, had spoken “eloquently and movingly about their experiences of racism and prejudice on and off campus,” and she affirmed the importance of their efforts. She declined to consider the original demands item by item. She explained that issuing apologies would be “misleading, if not downright dishonest” and that reacting to ultimatums would represent “a failure to take our students seriously.” Rather, Martin said, she chose to respond to the spirit of what students were trying to achieve. Among other things, she committed the College to building a more diverse staff and faculty—an effort that was already under way and that has since been accelerated. She also announced the creation of a multi-constituency internal task force as well as an external review team to study issues of inclusion and excellence on the Amherst campus. The latter was to report directly to the president and the board of trustees. By Sunday afternoon, ordinary life at Amherst had begun to reassert itself. Reputation to the contrary, college campuses are rhythmically conservative places. Papers and
exams were looming. Thanksgiving break was a week away. But the events of that long weekend have had an enduring afterlife, on campus and beyond. Students would gather again on Monday night in the Powerhouse to resume the discussion. Professors would set aside time in class to discuss the events in Frost; for the same purpose they also met in small groups and together as a faculty. In response to the initial list of demands on the website, and the way in which they were couched, alumni would make known their views in large numbers. And activists among the students would soon have something else to say, and would say it in a manner that deserves more notice than it has received. I’ll come back to all of this in a moment. Some context is important.
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N SIGNIFICANT WAYS THE STORY OF THE PROTEST IN Frost begins not last November but many years earlier. During the past two decades, under a succession of presidents and with generous support from alumni, Amherst has made good on a commitment to admit students from a wider variety of backgrounds than ever before. This was in part a reaffirmation of the College’s founding promise to provide an education regardless of need—a promise cited by President John F. Kennedy when he dedicated that very same Frost Library in 1963. It was also an overdue recognition that the student body did not reflect the country’s population. Talent comes from everywhere, and should therefore be drawn from everywhere. This commitment, along with an abiding faith in the liberal arts, is one way to ensure that the College remains an acknowledged leader among its peers—that it maintains the position in relation to the larger society that it has long held. Equity, excellence, and effectiveness should be seen as one. Since the 1990s, the student body has become far more diverse both in socioeconomic terms (some 24 percent of current students are Pell Grant recipients) and with respect to race and ethnicity. The College has also taken major steps to provide the financial aid that would make an Amherst education possible, including replacing loans with grants. Nearly 60 percent of students receive financial aid—assistance runs well up into the ranks of the middle class—and net tuition is among the lowest in the country among private colleges and universities of our kind. In terms of racial and ethnic background, the changes are apparent to any visitor. Four decades ago, when I graduated, fewer than 10 percent of the incoming students were African-American, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, or of mixed heritage. Last year the corresponding figure was above 40 percent. (For reference, 44 percent of current American 18-year-olds fall into these categories.) The number of children of alumni coming to Amherst has also grown slightly, and they are themselves an increasingly diverse population—about 25 percent are students of color. Leaving these breakdowns aside, the diversity of backgrounds can be judged from a single marker—the number of different high
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schools that each entering class of 450 students comes from: nearly 400. Meanwhile, the academic records of those admitted to the College, no matter what metric or group you’re looking at, have become stronger year after year. Taken as a whole, it is a remarkable and positive story, and has been recognized as such—most recently in the award to the College of the $1 million Jack Kent Cooke prize, for its commitment to educational equity. This evolution also presents challenges, one of the most important being the challenge to a sense of community. Fifty or sixty years ago, when the Amherst student body was all male, almost all white, and drawn from a much narrower band of social strata and secondary schools, the foundations of community were assumed to be more clearly present on orientation day—though even then, not for all students. The arrival of coeducation, in 1975, was the most consequential change in the College since its founding, and it took decades of subsequent effort by women and men to make adjustments in everything from attitudes to resources. That work continues. More recently, the emphasis on racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity has enriched the mix once again. Here’s one reality that holds true for the overwhelming majority of our students, no matter who they are or where they come from: Amherst College is by far the most diverse community they have ever lived in. Given the nature of society outside, it is likely to be the most diverse community that most will ever live in. One way of summing up all this recent history is to say that the world in all its variety has come into the College. That’s the flip side of our motto—Terras Irradient, “Let them enlighten the world”—and it potentially gives the motto’s aspirations even more leverage and meaning. Amherst’s ambition is a large one. A natural question to ask is: given the size of the challenge, should the College have waited to take it on until it had thought through every detail? The fact is, there was a great deal of planning, and the evolution started earlier and was more gradual than we may remember. But some kinds of change defy complete anticipation: that is their nature. Only a handful of colleges and universities have embarked down the road we’re on— signposts are few. I raised this topic not long ago with a recent Amherst graduate who is African-American and is now at Harvard Law School. He told me that he had often discussed the same question with his Amherst classmates. Yes, he said, he understood the appeal of the “make sure we’re completely prepared” school of thought. And he understood the frustrations on campus and beyond as issues arise that need to be addressed. But, he continued, he himself was firmly in the “put a stake in the ground right now” camp. You can’t prepare for everything. And there are certain things you won’t understand until you’ve actually started living with your decision. Besides, he said, some changes are too important to put off—if you keep waiting until you’re “ready,”
you’ll never take action at all. This has been particularly true when it comes to issues of race. Better to embark, then tack and adapt as needed. Isn’t that the story, he asked, of virtually every major inflection point in the country’s history? Or even parenthood? One of my trustee colleagues, made aware of this conversation, remembered an observation by John Henry Cardinal Newman: “Nothing would be done at all if one waited until it could be done so well that no one could find fault with it.”
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HE STUDENTS IN FROST HAD NOT COME TO THE LIbrary with any thought of staying for several days. They also had not come with any intention of issuing a statement or formulating demands. A decision by some of them to do so emerged from the emotional vector of the moment, as more people arrived and more people spoke. The statement was drafted quickly and on the fly, and in the knowledge that President Martin would soon arrive. It was more notable for rhetoric than for substance. It was provocative—deliberately so—but in a way that gave offense to many, eliciting reactions as predictable as they were understandable. The statement did not advance the cause. Student leaders I’ve spoken with know all this—they in fact came to that conclusion pretty quickly. Call it a mistake, call it a misstep, call it intemperate or inadequate or something else, but the most important thing about any ill-considered move is the move that comes next. This first statement issued by the students was widely read. Alumni, among others, responded quickly, and by the hundreds. Having received many of these messages, I know their range and tenor. Some people were mystified. Some were saddened. Many were angry, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, their long support for access and assistance, from which students of all backgrounds benefit, seemed to have gone unrecognized and unappreciated. A few responses were hostile in a way I won’t characterize. Teachable moments, at their best, splay in many directions, just as classroom teaching does. The students at Frost weren’t using the words “teachable moment.” Indeed, part of what drove them was sheer fatigue from the effort of having to explain—having to stand in as representatives of some larger group. But to anyone listening, the students were teaching: giving voice to concerns that others did not see. Alumni had lessons to offer. As a number of them pointed out, all human institutions have flaws, but some—like this one, they argued—were always striving, in fits and starts, toward something better. Bear in mind the moral backing and continual provision that have made improvements possible. Remember, too, that successful politics is pragmatic—better to seek common ground than to divide. And by the way, be careful about what ideas and statements you think a college should not “tolerate”: free expression is a core value in academe, and a core value of Amherst. Some alumni made the point that the world beyond the school is an imperfect
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and tough place—better get used to it. This is certainly true, but stamina, resilience, and courage are qualities that many Amherst students, particularly some of the ones speaking in the library, could give lessons in, better than most. Perhaps the most important thing that students needed to hear came from President Martin, when she declined to accept their initial demands or their timetables. As she explained over the course of the weekend—in various venues, to groups large and small, in person and in writing— demands and timetables are not the hallmarks of a serious conversation. Among those in the library, a serious conversation was in fact continuing. The students began to think more carefully about their aims, their methods, their arguments, their audience. Over that weekend, encouraged by faculty and staff, they set out to understand the intricacies of subjects such as the College budget, the hiring process, the nature of governance. Ultimately the students drafted a revised statement and a set of proposals—not demands. Those new documents, released in the days after the sitin ended, were very different from the original document. They did not get a comparable audience—a second-day story rarely does—but they ought to have one. The students acknowledged that the initial demands had been drafted in haste and in heat; that ultimatums were unrealistic; that their proposals required “revision and thoughtfulness”; and that realizing legitimate goals was best achieved by collaboration. They endorsed the principle of free expression; they had never meant to question it, a point to which they gave special emphasis. They also invoked and embraced the ideal of an academic culture where students “think critically, learn from their mistakes, and further develop as leaders who will proudly represent Amherst well beyond graduation.” The list of goals ranged widely. It touched on hiring practices, admissions policies, funding for clubs, the complexities of financial aid, staffing in the Counseling Center, the Honor Code, diversity on athletic teams, the allocation of space, tutoring, and much else. These proposals and others are under review now. As noted, the hiring of more faculty and staff of color was already a priority. At its regular January meeting, the trustees invited four of the student leaders of the sit-in to speak to the board about their ideas and concerns, their lives and their studies. It was late afternoon and already dark, a seasonal moment that for some reason seems to encourage discussion. The students recounted the history of the events in Frost, from their perspective, and then took up what they hoped to accomplish going forward. And they emphasized one point that, as I’ve thought about it in the months since then, seems particularly acute. Yes, they said, more faculty of color, more staff of color, more sensitivity, more communication—it’s all important. Greater diversity among faculty and staff is in fact urgent. But as one of the students explained, ordinary life at Amherst mainly occurs in “spaces the administration can’t reach.” Much of what needs to be done must be the
responsibility of students themselves. It’s not a job you can outsource. And it’s hard. It’s hard in the moment, and even harder to sustain over time in a community where a quarter of the population turns over every year. The students expressed an eagerness to build, peer to peer, on the foundation they had laid. A few months later, I spoke again to one of the students who had been at this meeting. I asked her about those hardto-reach spaces. She told me a story. “Senior students,” she said, “have a bar night, where we go to places in town. Last night, while I was waiting in line, a student from another school made a racially insensitive remark. There were several people from Amherst in front of me. Initially I took the student to task—don’t talk to me that way. And a beat went by, and then the Amherst students joined in too. Several months ago I don’t think that would’ve happened. I think
The students would soon have more to say, in a manner that deserves greater notice. They acknowledged that their statement had been drafted in haste and in heat.
that a willingness to step up and take accountability for this community is something that I see a lot more of.” That’s just an anecdote. It’s not a report card and it’s not an ending. Schools, like students, are works in progress. A liberal arts education is never finished. Neither is the task of building community, at Amherst or anyplace else. Many on campus have said that pointing out the elephant in the room has had the positive effect of easing tensions and encouraging open conversation. I hope that’s true, and believe it to be. But the nature of this elephant is that it will need pointing out again and again. And there will be other elephants, in other rooms.
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MHERST HAS NEVER LACKED FOR FINGERS TO DO THE pointing. Protests, demonstrations, and public displays of disaffection are nothing new at the College. They are woven into the culture of higher education in America, and have always had a special prominence at Amherst. On a train recently I ran into a former dean of the faculty who reminded me—a slight smile above his sober bow tie—that
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he had twice been ousted from his office in Converse Hall for a period of several days by protesting students; this was nearly 50 years ago, in the late ’60s and early ’70s. One result was the creation of the Department of Black Studies. As an aside, that department today is one of the most lively and rigorous at the College, with an intensive writing component that draws students from throughout the student body. I looked back recently at issues of the Amherst Student—our newspaper of record—to determine how many notable demonstrations had taken place at the College during the past half century. By my count there has been one, on average, every 18 months. The issues have been all over the map. The war in Vietnam, of course (more than once). Race relations on campus and nationwide (more than once). Sexual harassment (more than once; the first in 1989). Divestment from holdings in South Africa (more than once). Support for fraternities (more than once). Higher wages for College workers. Gay rights. The war in Iraq. Divestment from holdings in fossil fuels. The hiring of more faculty of color. It was hard not to stop and read the accounts of these events—like going through trunks in the attic. One revelation was that some of those who today have misgivings about the behavior of current students were themselves the cause of misgivings in days gone by. There’s no single reason why these public displays are so deeply a part of the College’s culture. One part of the explanation is surely something that President Charles W. Cole put his finger on when he noted of students at Amherst—in a Janus-like remark that eases nimbly between praise and forbearance—that they had attained their “full intellectual powers” without having “their zest and enthusiasm dulled by experience.” He was referring to people who have just marked their 60th and (yes) 70th reunions. The fact that Amherst is a liberal arts college where students are expected to examine premises critically and to speak up loudly also has something to do with it. So does the fact that, as President John William Ward once put it, education at Amherst is not just a form of mastery—it’s a form of activity, one that presents a choice: either act on your ideals or change your mind. Our Congregationalist beginnings play a role, with their emphasis on collective action and continual attention to social ills. Then, too, there’s the simple fact of small size, which brings both intimacy and friction, and encourages the idea—which happens to be true—that the institution is not faceless and that people are prepared to listen. Put all of the above in a bundle and what you have is the ethos of this place. The liberal arts are about emphasizing what we share as human beings. The irony, but also the gift, is that one of the things we share is the reality of difference. The challenge at a school such as Amherst, with its small and diverse population, is to create community and derive insight amid a world of difference. In training a spotlight on certain dimensions of the issue, the protest in Frost shed light on all the others,
whether the differences involve athletics or field of study or country of origin—or for that matter, the year you went to college. There’s a passage from the novelist Marilynne Robinson that President Martin often quotes. It has to do with how the ethos of a college creates a multigenerational community in which people from an older generation come to see unrelated people from a younger one through a familial lens—as “kin” and as “heirs.” I remember once, in the early 1970s, at the end of a holiday break, telling my parents that I was heading back to school—that it was time to “get home.” Masks of indulgence could not hide a fleeting glint of hurt. I had forgotten about that episode until the conversation between trustees and students last January. One of the students, a young woman from the Bronx, said something
Ordinary life at Amherst, one student explained, mainly occurs in “spaces the administration can’t reach”— and must be the responsibility of students themselves.
that has stayed with me. I’ve cited it in many conversations and in letters to alumni and other friends. She had just returned from a fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Her countenance came alive as she recalled her experience there—a visible reflection of the thrill of discovery that a liberal arts education provides. She was also acutely conscious, in the Amherst environment, of the fact that “difference,” of whatever kind, was often not engaged with candidly or with the kind of moral imagination that proceeds from empathy. What she wanted above all, she said, was to be able to think of Amherst as “home.” Home, in the aspirational sense, is a place that offers not only comfort but also a context for discomfort—emotionally, socially, intellectually. It offers a set of values—values that can be tested, but values nonetheless. It offers a space where you can be whatever you are, knowing that deeper bonds are durable. That sense of “home” is probably never achievable anywhere, but when this young woman used the word she put her finger on something elemental—something that Amherst must remember, because it is as essential to education as it is to life. k
22 SUMMER 2016 AMHERST
AMHERST.EDU/ GO/SIT-IN: Links to all of the statements, documents and press accounts cited in this article
C
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The science of lightning bugs STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY GEOFFREY GILLER ’10
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r Summer 2016 Amherst 23
Biology major Sarah Sander ’06 is part of a team that plans to decipher the firefly genome.
T
he flat light of dusk settles over a small meadow in western New York. Trills of tree frogs mingle with the songs of nearby catbirds and the occasional whine of a mosquito. The grass is tall on this warm July evening, in some spots rising over the head of Sarah Sander ’06. She’s in her full field regalia: headlamp, stopwatch, tall rubber boots and, most important, a collapsible white net with a 6-foot aluminum handle. Just before 9 p.m., she spots the first dim flickers of yellow light amongst low tree branches: fireflies. These bioluminescent bugs are quintessential visuals of summer evenings, at least in the eastern United States, where they use light signals to attract mates. (There are many species of fireflies out west, too, but they tend to use pheromones for
25 SUMMER 2016 AMHERST
As the sky darkens, Sander checks the flashpattern timing of a firefly she’s just caught.
26 Amherst Summer 2016
With a decoded genome in hand, Sander and other researchers will have a better handle on how, exactly, fireflies produce light.
this purpose.) While many of us are content to simply watch and marvel at the blinking light patterns, Sander, a postdoctoral associate at Cornell, is part of a team hoping to unravel the very nature of these beetles. Their goal is ambitious: to decipher the full genome of a firefly for the first time. To pay for their research, they’ve turned to an unconventional source: the eight researchers have brought in $10,000 via an online crowdfunding campaign.
W
ITH A DECODED genome in hand, researchers will have a better handle on how, exactly, fireflies produce light. “We know the basic players, but we don’t really know how they’re made or regenerated,” says Sander. Two of the fundamental components involved in the light-making—an enzyme called luciferase and a substrate called luciferin—have extensive biomedical applications. They are used to monitor tumor growth in cancer research, for instance, and to determine what genes are being expressed in a particular organism. But scientists don’t know how fireflies make luciferin. “There’s no other natural product like it,” says another member of the firefly genome team, Tim Fallon, a Ph.D. student at MIT. Besides their glowing rear ends, fireflies (or lightning bugs, depending on where you’re from) have other unusual characteristics. Many of the 150 or so species found 27 SUMMER 2016 AMHERST
Sander’s job will be to make sense of the genome, figuring out where each gene is and what it does.
In the lab, scientists use two of the light-making components found in ďŹ reies to monitor tumor growth in cancer research.
in the United States are toxic, Sander says, and some will actually start bleeding as a defense mechanism, extruding their toxin-filled blood when threatened, as a way to make themselves unpalatable to potential predators. Others, like species in the genus Photuris, have lost the ability to make these defensive toxins; females in this genus use their flashes to lure males of a different, toxinproducing species, pretending to be females of the toxic species ready to mate. When the males approach, the larger Photuris devour them, ingesting the toxins for their own use. (Talk about a femme fatale.)
lose the synchrony moments later, like some sort of alien Morse code. Sander is in her element. Spying a firefly, she sweeps her net back and forth in a rapid, narrow figure-8 motion, with the grace and efficiency of a well-trained martial artist. It’s a Photuris male, flashing angrily as she gently but firmly plucks it from the net and puts it in a plastic tube, where it scurries along the sides. Although it’s difficult to imagine when surrounded by hundreds of blinking lights, there is some evidence that firefly populations may be in trouble. In the United States and globally, says Lynn Faust, an independent firefly researcher who has worked with Sander in the past, reports of shrinking or disappearing populations abound. “Everyone agrees they remember more as children.... I have watched, personally, population after population disappear,” Faust says, citing habitat destruction, pesticide use and light pollution as likely causes. But what’s important to people like Faust and Sander
A
S THE SKY CONtinues to darken, and the birdsongs fade, more and more fireflies blink on in the meadow. Soon, greenish-yellow flashes consume the grass, trees and air. From a distance, patterns emerge and disappear as the bugs flash in unison, only to
Want More Fireflies in Your Yard? IF YOU WANT more fireflies in your own yard—and who wouldn’t? —try turning off outdoor lights at night, reducing the amount of pesticides you spray on your lawn and letting your grass grow a little longer in the summer. Or, better yet, leave parts of the lawn totally unmowed. But no need to overthink it. “Best practice is just: turn out all your lights, go out on your porch and watch,” says Sander. In the words of a fellow firefly researcher, Lynn Faust: “They are one of the few insects we are not trying to kill,” thanks to the “beauty and mystery and awe” that they offer the world. 29 SUMMER 2016 AMHERST
is scientific proof. Are these apparent trends merely anecdotes, or are they true causes for concern? While the genome work won’t directly answer that question, Sander says, it can play an important role in firefly conservation, by identifying which populations have the most genetic diversity and are therefore most important to conserve.
mer to study other aspects of firefly genetics. At Amherst, Sander also studied flying, flashy creatures: not fireflies, but hummingbirds. “I’m a sucker for charismatic organisms,” she says. Assembling the full firefly genome will make use of her Ph.D. work, which involved looking at shorter segments of the firefly genome. She’ll also be in charge of making sense of the genome, by taking the long strings of letters that represent nucleic acid and figuring out where each gene is and what it does. Grants for this kind of research are hard to come by, which is one reason Sander and her team chose to pursue crowdfunding. But there’s a second reason, she says: “We thought it was a great way to reach out to the wider community, scientists and nonscientists, and involve them and show them what we can do with their support.” Many of their backers sent detailed messages about how much they have loved fireflies since childhood. By now, the light has completely faded from the moonless sky. Apart from Sander’s headlamp, the blinking bugs are the only source of light. On a warm night such as this, they might keep flashing past midnight. At the parking area we stop to admire the lights. The trees look like a Christmas display. “People don’t go outside in the dark,” Sander tells me. They perceive the darkness as full of threats and unpleasant bugs. That may be true, but it’s also full of strange and mysterious beauty—beauty that Sander’s research is helping to make a little less mysterious. k
A
DULT FIREFLIES live for only about two weeks, an urgent frenzy of flashing in a desperate effort to find a mate. The eggs that females lay hatch later in the summer; the larvae overwinter and then usually pupate the next summer. The larvae also glow, although more dimly and without the rhythmic flashes, possibly as a warning to predators that they’re toxic. Scientists have removed the light-emitting organs from the larvae, only to find that when those larvae become adults, they can still light up just fine. That means, says Sander, that they create a brand new light-emitting structure between their larval and adult stages. Sander has collected seven fireflies tonight. She will pair up some of them up to see if they’ll produce larvae to raise in captivity. “I’ll put the female in with this male and see if we get babies,” she says. “Or, if she eats him. Sometimes we get both.” These fireflies are of a different species than those in the genome project, but Sander and a collaborator hope to use the new larvae she produces this sum30
SUMMER 2016 AMHERST
“I’ll put the female in with this male,” Sander says, “and see if we get babies.”
Many perceive darkness as full of threats, Sander says, and so miss out on its strange beauty.
Although it’s difficult to imagine when surrounded by hundreds of blinking lights, there is some evidence that firefly populations may be in trouble.
By Susannah Black ’99 Illustration by Melinda Beck
Might Right and
in the Pioneer Valley From one professor, students across generations learned to think more clearly, to read more carefully, to state their cases more precisely.
32
Q Arkes taught that all the work of statecraft is done in court, in conversation, in the margins of returned papers.
UESTIONS OF JUSTICE PURSUE US from freshman-year discussions in Valentine through the headlines and dinner party conversations of our later lives. Specifics change, but the core issues remain—issues of right and wrong, justice and injustice, the use of force to override the choice of the individual. The conversation about these issues is called political philosophy, and I began to learn it in the classroom of Hadley Arkes, the Edward N. Ney Professor in American Institutions (Political Science), Emeritus. Hadley taught us that political philosophy is everybody’s business, and that it’s an urgent adventure (and an awfully fun one). I’m not talking about the kind of political philosophy that is an arid antiquarianism: a survey of what a disconnected series of authors in the past had argued. In Hadley’s class, one had to understand what they argued, of course, but one then had to ask whether, in fact, these authors were correct: whether their accounts of the good, of the just and the unjust, were accounts that corresponded to reality. These conversations were his method of teaching; they started in the classroom, but they continued in his responses to our work—those typedout, pages-long commentaries on every paper he graded. We knew, of course, that Hadley was not a detached academic. He did his own legwork: he periodically disappeared to Do Things in Washington, or perhaps more precisely, to Get Up To Things there. But we also knew his priority: he was a teacher. And if he was, as one former student has described, something of a Nero Wolfe, an armchair detective sending all of us Archie Goodwins out into the world, he only ever sent us out for the City’s good, and ours. And what was it he taught? First of all, he taught us to read—slowly, closely—and to argue. Teaching us to write was there as well, but the writing came second to speaking, I think. Reading him, one can hear his teaching voice in one’s head. I say first of all: it did not end there. It was not that he taught something like “thinking skills,” to be deployed toward whatever end one wills. Rather, he taught that reasoning is a genuine and reliable tool that leads one toward what’s real. He demonstrated that all of our legal traditions, all of the beliefs that we (in our good relativist childhoods) had held about human rights, depended on there being such a thing as human nature— human nature that was stable and 34 Amherst Summer 2016
not subject to willful redefinition, either by individuals or by societies. His approach was, well, somewhat different from those of others who have taught in this tradition. Of course we were assigned all the usual suspects—Aristotle, Locke, Kant—but Hadley is the only one I know of who encouraged a Garments of the Court and Palace approach to (for example) printouts of certain dissenting Supreme Court opinions—and above all, to Lincoln. We were expected to read especially the formal court opinions with alertness to the power of these words. Written by those in a particular office, in a particular circumstance, they had a power not completely divorced from the liturgical, but we also were aware of being invited into the company of teachers, of friends, of people who did us honor by welcoming us into their conversation, through the ceremonious activity of reading. And the ceremony was not decreased just because one was reading in a coffeehouse on North Pleasant Street, rather than in exile outside Florence. It’s easy to get this wrong, to misunderstand. There was no worship of the authority of our authors, here. Where a writer went wrong, though he might be a chief justice, he had to be challenged—and, in fact, especially then. The authority was not in the office, but in reason, in reality; any freshman might talk back to a judge on the bench, if he could substantiate his counterarguments. But the power was in the office, and so when one read the bad opinions—even those that reached the right conclusions, but through the means of unjustified or vague premises and muddled reasoning— one had the sense of witnessing a slow disaster: Pompeii, but with ash and lava overtaking the city at a hundredth of the speed.
I
think I would still be pro-life even without having run into Hadley, but I might well be too stressed out and panicky and incoherent to write about abortion (and about other things where the stakes are frighteningly high) if it hadn’t been for him. He helped me find out how to write about the most important things in a way that’s not just an expression of my own feelings but that is accessible to public reason, and how to nevertheless remain sensitive and passionate about the topics of my reasoning. Hadley instilled in us what might be described as an affirmation of the potential effectiveness of reason. Learning from Hadley, one knew in one’s bones that if the argument worked—if the structure was right and the premises were accurate and the conclusions, therefore, followed—then the actual carrying out of any physicalworld consequences was a sort of mopping-up operation. All the work of statecraft and law and politics is done in the classroom, in the courtroom, in conversation, in the pages of journal articles or in the margins of returned papers. Leaving the Octagon, walking down the hill toward Frost Library, one might turn to him and say, “But that implies that…” and name a physical-world consequence. But a good deal of the work had already been done. (Burke would be appalled. To think there are people out there who believe Professor Arkes to be a conservative.) The heart of what he argues is that positive laws, to be just, must flow from just premises in the natural law, or must not violate them; that law, to be real law, must be a matter of reason and right, not merely will and expediency. And where this is not the case, bad premises will, eventually, bear bad
fruit: arid drawing from historical precedent will, in the absence of genuine reason, lead to terrible legal decisions—decisions that were implied, though perhaps hidden, in the initial premises.
A
recent dinner celebrating Hadley’s retirement after 50 years at Amherst, held at The Union League Club in New York, was effectively a reunion of many generations of his students. There were people just a few years younger than Hadley himself, from the first class he taught; there were people who had been in his most recent class, in fall 2014. I sat next to Alexander Vega ’16, a double major in math and classics who is now considering law school; it was a lawyer-heavy event. But the ex-student who gave the blessing was an Episcopal priest: Phil Jackson ’85, who had taken a law degree at Yale, and indeed had practiced, before seeking ordination. “I’ve been told I approach preaching strangely,” he said at the event, “that I make arguments when I preach. I’ve been told that I preach like a lawyer. I don’t preach like a
lawyer. I preach like Hadley Arkes.” There was a sort of ceremonial Reading of the Telegrams—only it was emails of course—from people who couldn’t be there. David Eisenhower ’70 wrote eloquently of Hadley’s contributions to the prolife movement, describing a “great mind that pressed this and related issues over the course of 40 years, educating politicians and judges, educating a generation of opinion makers and leaders.” There’s no use pretending that this reaction is universal. Eisenhower’s email hints at why that’s the case. I suppose I could write this piece as though it were merely an appreciation of an uncontroversial elder statesman of the academy, but that would be disingenuous. The controversy Hadley has provoked is important because it is substantive: the points at issue remain keen and sharp, and the debates lively. It is not, however, the hostile reactions that he called forth that should surprise us; what was perhaps surprising was the numbers of those who were drawn, often with a combination of delight and unease, to accept his arguments on many issues—and to accept, in doing so,
what is called moral realism. In the classroom, Hadley engaged us in substantive moral questions through the consideration of specific cases in law. The groundlevel questions in moral and political philosophy that are his central concerns are instantiated, again and again, in particular cases; the argument is one that plays itself out in courtrooms, but it is no “specialist” matter, of concern only to lawyers. The meat of the legal questions addressed by these cases is the same as that of the ethical questions hashed out as well in pubs, in classrooms, at dinner tables and in bedrooms—wherever people find themselves arguing over matters of right and wrong. Even though he is now officially emeritus, Hadley will teach one last “Political Obligations” class this coming fall. He continues to write at a fierce clip, and he has recently founded the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding in Washington, D.C. Its supporters and friends include many former students; it grew out of an Amherst group, the Committee on the American Founding, and its assistant director is Garrett Snedeker ’09 (whose late father, WilSummer 2016 Amherst 35
A New York retirement dinner for Arkes (front row, center, in gold tie) was effectively a reunion of many generations of his Amherst students. It was a lawyerheavy event.
One alumnus, dodging bullets in Beirut, thought: “I got into this to test out the ideas in that ‘Bureaucracy’ class of Hadley’s.”
liam Snedeker ’79, had also been a student of Hadley’s). The institute has begun a series of regional seminars that bring practicing lawyers and judges a taste of the reasoning to which Hadley introduced his Amherst students: the understanding of the natural law on which the Founders based the American regime—and on which Lincoln preserved it.
H
adley Arkes has, it seems to me, an unusually pronounced ability to create knock-on effects in the lives of his ex-students: knockon effects that tend to generate stories worth telling. There’s one, for example, about Geoff O’Connell ’70, who, dodging bullets as CIA chief of station in Beirut, found himself thinking: “And I got into this to test out the ideas in that ‘Bureaucracy’ class of Hadley’s.” For other students, one symptom
Arkes with students in the 1990s. “Conversations were his method of teaching,” the author writes. “They started in the classroom, but they continued in his responses to our work.”
36 Amherst Summer 2016
of the Arkes knock-on effect has been a habit of participating in a particular sort of debate, and even participating with a particular style of argument that has followed us from the Amherst campus through the rest of our lives. It is not a style of reflection one can shake. Making these arguments, pursuing them and deploying them, is not something that one stops doing after college: that was, many of his students have found, only the start. One of his colleagues is known for asking of his classes: “Does law ask us to be better than we are?” Well, if it doesn’t, what right could it possibly have to ask us to do anything? What may one legislate if not morality? If a law does not seek justice, then why would magistrates be justified in enacting and enforcing it? Either Option A: the law asks us precisely to behave better than we do, or Option B: it tells us what kind of ice cream to order. And Option B is tyranny. Because we’re persons
who act, by asking us to behave better than we do, the law is asking us to become better than we are. Hadley always asked us to become better than we were, by asking us to think more clearly than we did, to read more carefully, to state our case more precisely. He asked us to love wisdom. And he asked us to love it on behalf of people who could not yet love it themselves. He taught us it was possible to desire the good and to delight in it, to hunt it down in its lair. And if some of us have found that it was hunting for us all along, I don’t think Hadley has been too taken aback. k Susannah Black ’99 is associate editor at Providence magazine and a founding editor of Solidarity Hall. Her writing has appeared in First Things, Front Porch Republic and elsewhere. She blogs at Radio Free Thulcandra and tweets at @suzania. An earlier version of this article appeared in Ethika Politika.
38 An ’86 rabbi led a sweeping rewrite of a High Holiday prayer book. 42 A ’74 alumnus found a way to bring attention to often-overlooked art.
Photograph by Maria Stenzel
ALUMNI IN THE WORLD
Beyond Campus
As a disillusioned teacher, Ken Danford ’88 decided to leave the system. He created a way for teens to leave it, too.
Summer 2016 Amherst 37
BEYOND CAMPUS
BY WILLIAM SWEET
your new book read over the same week, in hundreds of communities, by Jews observing the holiest days in their religious calendar.
That’s some close reading. Rabbi Hara Person ’86 is executive editor of Mishkan HaNefesh, the year-old, two-volume prayer book used by Reform congregations on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It represents a top-to-bottom rewrite of the High Holiday prayer book, or machzor—the first rewrite since the publication of the Reform movement’s Gates of Repentance in 1978. “One thing I got out of Amherst was to be a very close reader of texts,” says Person, director of CCAR Press (the publishing arm of the Central Conference of American Rabbis). “In rabbinic school, you do a lot of close reading. And so Amherst has helped me enormously in what I do today.” Though she also serves as High Holiday rabbi of Congregation B’nai Olam in Fire Island Pines, N.Y., and as adjunct rabbi at the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, Person has devoted her career to publishing. The development of the new machzor dates to 2008. “We had a mini think tank with rabbis. We’d had them do an internal process in their congregations, with discussion and study,” she says. Changing demographics and sensibilities drove the project. “Our people are diverse,” she says. How might a prayer book speak to non-Jewish partners, to Jews who are doubting? “We wanted to be inclusive, and not say there’s only one right way to be sitting here.” The machzor features new translations and commentary, a transliterated liturgy and alternatives 38 Amherst Summer 2016
A New Way to Pray
to traditional texts. The prayer of Avinu Malkeinu (“Our Father, Our King”) is accompanied by an alternative “prayer of protest.” Person explains: “Instead of saying to God, ‘Please be gracious to me and be good to me,’ essentially, it says —not in this language; it’s much prettier—‘Hey, God, I’m pissed off at you.’ We want to allow people to give voice to that emotion.” The book offers a nongendered alternative to the traditional blessing for those called to the Torah by name, to be inclusive of trans people. “We’re the first mainstream machzor to use it,” Person says. And it rediscovers medieval piyyutim (liturgical poems), long ago deleted for being too metaphorical but now welcomed back for their beauty. “There’s one that talks about God as a gardener, one that talks about God as a potter.” More than 300 congregations, prayer groups, college groups and day schools used drafts of Mishkan HaNefesh between 2011 and 2015. The final version incorporates
A Reform rabbi led a sweeping rewrite of the High Holiday prayer book.
Hara Person ’86 MAJOR: INTERDISCIPLINARY
“Our people are diverse. We wanted to be inclusive.”
their feedback. At Westchester (N.Y.) Reform Temple, which began using drafts in 2011, Rabbi Jonathan Blake ’95 is impressed with its “literary sensitivity.” “Our ‘test drive’ was so successful that the congregation immediately elected to adopt Mishkan HaNefesh as our new High Holiday prayer book,” says Rabbi Barry Block ’85 of Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Ark. “Congregants were particularly moved by the Yizkor (Memorial) Service, during which seven congregants who had been bereaved during the previous year came forward to kindle lights.” Introducing a new text to a congregation is no easy task, and so the praise means a lot to Person. “I’ve been doing this kind of work for 18 years now,” she says, “and I’ve never put out something before that’s been received so universally well.” William Sweet is a news writer at Amherst.
FROM TOP: BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES; MARIA STENZEL
RELIGION U Imagine having
BY KATHERINE DUKE ’05 EDUCATION U It’s a Tuesday in May in
Sunderland, Mass. Young people sit conversing on couches and around tables in a brightly painted common room. One holds an organic chemistry review book in her lap. Others might go upstairs later, to attend a voice lesson, movie-making class or tutoring session. But only if they want to—there are no grades, tests or attendance requirements. This is North Star: SelfDirected Learning for Teens, a nonprofit co-founded by Ken Danford ’88, and the entire point is that it isn’t school.
Danford taught public school in Maryland and then in Amherst early in his career but grew disillusioned. “Even in this relatively organized, well-funded, calm, professional community,” he says, “kids didn’t like school.” Many struggled with depression and anxiety, or chafed against rules. Even those who earned good grades, he concluded, did so without much passion. Danford was in a UMass doctoral program to become a school administrator but dropped out to launch North Star (originally called Pathfinder) with Joshua Hornick in 1996, as a resource for teens who want to pursue their own interests without school. Nowadays, between 60 and 70 teens are enrolled at any given time. Families pay a membership fee (but Danford says they turn no one away for inability to pay). North Star has a small staff of paid teachers, including John Sprague ’78, and numerous interns. In addition to optional classes and one-on-one tutoring,
Ken Danford ’88 MAJOR: PSYCHOLOGY
“Everybody should be able to try life without school.”
When a disillusioned teacher chose to leave the system, he created a way for teens to leave it, too.
the center offers parent conferences, special trips, help in designing personalized academic projects, job-search support and a place to socialize. “And, believe it or not, this works,” Danford says. “[These kids] are succeeding in brilliant ways, just the same as the kids who go to the most elite private and public schools.” Most eventually pass high school equivalency tests and enroll in two- or four-year colleges (two North Star alumnae have graduated from Amherst). Some go directly into the workforce, start businesses or travel the world. Many, after a year or two at North Star, choose to return to high school—and that’s OK. “We’re not saying that nobody should go to school,” Danford says. “We say that everybody should be able to try life without school.” He knows this is a subversive idea, and a complicated one to implement in a financially stable and accessible way on a large scale. But he wants it to catch on. He’s founded Liberated Learners, an umbrella organization for programs across the United States and Canada based on North Star’s model. Powerful testimonials come from the kids in the common room. They recall their previous schools as sites of bullying or boredom, contrasted with the friendships and freedom they find here. Tristan, a longtime homeschooler, calls Danford his “North Star dad” and keeps apologizing for gushing about the program. “At North Star, everybody’s a lot nicer,” says a girl named Levi—whether students or staff, she can tell they’re there because they want to be. Katherine Duke ’05 is the magazine’s assistant editor.
Beyond High School
Photograph by Maria Stenzel
Summer 2016 Amherst 39
BEYOND CAMPUS
BY LORI ATHERTON LAW U Chaka Laguerre
’08 hopes to someday advise governments and organizations on international law, human rights and social justice issues. With three graduate degrees, she’s on her way. But before that, she has one more accomplishment to add to her résumé: serving as a trainee for the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.
Laguerre, who received her J.D. from the University of Michigan in 2014, begins her 10-month clerkship in September, working in The Hague for Judge Giorgio Gaja of Italy. She looks forward to “learning from judges who are some of the most highly esteemed international law experts in the world,” she says, “and working on cases that raise intriguing and 40 Amherst Summer 2016
A lawyer will head to The Hague to clerk for a United Nations judge.
Chaka Laguerre ’08 MAJORS: ENGLISH, THEATER & DANCE
“I’ve had opportunities that I never dared to dream of growing up.”
challenging questions of international law.” Laguerre is a first-generation college student. Her senior year at Amherst, she was also the reigning Miss Jamaica U.S. In that role, she instituted projects that aimed to rebuild and empower communities in Jamaica and in the Jamaican diaspora. Those experiences motivated Laguerre to become a lawyer, to “advocate on behalf of others to help improve the conditions of their lives, or to help them improve the lives of others.” After law school, Laguerre earned an M.A. in legal and political theory, with the highest distinction, from University College London. Her dissertation was named the best in legal and political theory in 2014–15. This summer she completed an M.Phil. in history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. “I am a lawyer by hand and an academic at heart,” she says.
“These research degrees allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between law, knowledge and authority, and allowed me to study the issues that I care about in a rigorous and deep manner.” Laguerre learned she’d been accepted to the ICJ clerkship just as she was about to speak to high school students in Brooklyn, N.Y., as part of the National Association of Women Judges’ Color of Justice Program. She is one of the first people from the Caribbean to be selected for the clerkship. Amherst’s Forris Jewett Moore Fellowship helped her to study at Cambridge. Now, she says, she is proud to represent Amherst in The Hague, and she hopes her story will inspire Amherst students and alumni who come from backgrounds or circumstances similar to her own.ell.” Lori Atherton is a writer at the University of Michigan Law School.
TOP: UN PHOTO/CIJ-ICJ/FRANK VAN BEEK
Immersed in International Law
Another Reason to Check Your Kid’s Phone BY KATHERINE DUKE ’05 SOCIAL MEDIA U For
overweight people— especially overweight women—Twitter can be an unfriendly place. Eatingdisorder researcher Janet Lydecker ’06 has the data to prove it.
While training in clinical psychology, Lydecker noticed that her adolescent patients frequently mentioned their use of Twitter and other social media. This gave her the idea for a study: She and six other researchers searched for tweets that included the word “fat,” gathered 4,596 of them over a four-hour period and then analyzed their themes. The study, “Does This Tweet Make Me Look Fat?,” published in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders, found that more than 56 percent of these tweets conveyed negative messages, while about 32
Illustration by Hannah Barczyk
percent were neutral and less than 12 percent were positive. The negative tweets associated being fat with being gluttonous, unattractive, sexually undesirable, sedentary, lazy and stupid. “Women were more likely to be targeted with weight-stigmatizing messages—especially about unattractiveness—compared with men,” Lydecker says. Similar weight stigma has long been apparent in traditional media. Social media sites, however, are a relatively new frontier for psychologists—and an important one to study, considering the major role they play in the daily lives of millions of young people. Lydecker believes additional research is needed into the influence of social media on body image and eating habits, and into the impact of weight stigma more generally on whether people seek clinical treatment for weight and eating disorders.
Janet Lydecker ’06 MAJORS: FRENCH, PSYCHOLOGY
“Women were more likely to be targeted.”
In “Does This Tweet Make Me Look Fat?” a psychologist studied how social media can stigmatize weight.
She says parents may need to exercise vigilance about their kids’ online interactions. “Much of media’s influence is most powerful when it operates peripherally,” she adds. “Awareness of potential influence can often mitigate the effect.” Lydecker wrote her Amherst thesis on eating disorders in female college students. She’s now a postdoctoral associate in psychiatry at Yale. She co-authored two other studies published this spring. One, based on a survey of more than 1,000 parents, showed that they were far less accurate at identifying obesity in their children than in themselves. Yet, in influencing the ways these parents fed their children and talked with them about weight, their perceptions of their children’s weight mattered more than their children’s actual weight. “Parents must first recognize a problem before they decide to seek treatment,” Lydecker says. And though it is inaccurate, and may be hurtful, to associate weight gain with personal character flaws (as so many on Twitter do), obesity remains, in her words, “a serious medical condition.” The other recent study examined the cross-cultural sensitivity of clincial strategies for measuring how parents feed their children. And for a forthcoming paper, Lydecker and colleagues asked participants: “If your doctor were discussing a weight problem or binge-eating behavior with you, what terms would you like her/ him to use?” “We know that some terms can make patients feel criticized or misunderstood by their health provider, which leads to poor health outcomes and makes them less likely to go back for care,” she says. Whether we’re in a doctor’s office or on the Web, Lydecker’s work suggests, it’s crucial to be thoughtful about how we discuss weight. Summer 2016 Amherst 41
The Puget Sound is the New Hudson River
BY KATHERINE DUKE ’05 MUSEUMS U “Why haven’t I ever heard about these artists before?” Visitors have been asking that question “constantly” since Lindsey Echelbarger ’74 opened the Cascadia Art Museum in September. Located on the edge of Puget Sound in Edmonds, Wash., just north of Seattle, the nonprofit museum showcases the often “overlooked and understudied” painters, printmakers, photographers and sculptors of the Northwest United States, particularly those active in the mid-19th to mid-20th century. The museum’s inaugural exhibition, for instance, celebrated early members of the Northwest Watercolor Society, such as Z. Vanessa Helder and Dorothy Dolph Jensen. This summer brought a retrospective of the paintings of John Matsudaira, one of the region’s many influential Japanese-American artists. Opening in September will be a solo exhibition by Peggy Strong, whose murals adorned public buildings in Washington and Alaska. Always “an inveterate visitor of historical museums and battle42 Amherst Summer 2016
fields,” Echelbarger says it was at Amherst that he “discovered that art history was just another way to look at history.” In the late 1970s he joined his father’s real estate development company in Edmonds (now run mainly by his son Nick Echelbarger ’04), and soon he and wife Carolyn began collecting art to fill their walls. But where, they wondered, were the works by artists from around the Cascade mountain range? “In the past 40 to 50 years, other parts of the U.S. have come to rediscover and appreciate their regional art,” he says, mentioning Connecticut’s Old Lyme and New Mexico’s Santa Fe art colonies, among many others. “The Northwest, however, has curiously lagged behind.” His research led him to befriend Seattle gallery owner and Northwestern art historian David F. Martin. They began dreaming of opening a museum. When Echelbarger and son purchased an old Safeway building, the dream grew into a reality. With its “loftlike feel, open ceilings and huge curved wooden beams,” Echelbarger says, half of the former grocery store proved ideal for the galleries, classrooms and gift shop of the Cascadia Art
Seattle is not known for its rich art heritage. One collector aims to change that.
Lindsey Echelbarger ’74 MAJORS: FINE ARTS, HISTORY
At Amherst he “discovered that art history was just another way to look at history.”
Museum; a few local business now rent the other half. “We expected about 300 [visitors] at our opening last September,” Echelbarger says, “and we hosted over 520.” The museum received a write-up in the Los Angeles Times. It has more than 550 paying members and attracts an average of about 1,000 visitors per month, including local schoolchildren. Echelbarger and Martin serve on the museum’s board. The museum has an executive director, two full-time employees and more than 30 volunteer staff members. Though about 200 artworks are on display, “Cascadia currently has no permanent collection. We rely solely on borrowing from other museums, collectors and family members of the artists,” says Echelbarger (who has lent seven works from his own collection). “Our no-acquisition policy will probably change soon: we have many people contacting us about possible donations.” Washington State is already known globally as the home of Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and Amazon, he points out. “I hope that in 10 years, the world is aware that the Northwest has a worldclass art heritage to match!” k
FROM TOP: TOM MARKS, DIANA SCHEEL
BEYOND CAMPUS
46 This parenting memoir will make you feel less alone. 47 HBO takes on the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
Photograph by Beth Perkins
ARTS NEWS AND REVIEWS
Amherst Creates
David Rimmer ’71 wrote a play about a man who crashes a college reunion, falls in love and is eventually elected class president.
Summer 2016 Amherst 43
AMHERST CREATES
NO HAPPY END If the stories of Nazi hunters have a heroic ring, they also beg for an unromantic telling. | BY PAUL STATT ’78 THE NAZI HUNTERS By Andrew Nagorski ’69 Simon & Schuster
“Most of the Nazi hunters,” Nagorski writes in the book, “will soon only exist in our collective memories, where myth and reality are likely to become even more intertwined than they are today.”
NONFICTION U Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, but The Nazi Hunters left a bad taste in my mouth. The topic is simply distasteful: Nazis, the Holocaust they executed, the justice that finally caught up with them—or never did. I can’t blame the book or author for my dyspeptic response. Andrew Nagorski ’69—an award-winning foreign correspondent who spent decades trotting the globe—is a dashing teller of tales. And if the stories have a familiar—maybe heroic?—ring, they also beg for the unromantic telling that Nagorski, who met and interviewed every living protagonist, brings them. The iconic Nazi hunter is Simon Wiesenthal, an Austrian Holocaust survivor who pursued war criminals relentlessly. Jan Sehn was a Polish judge who prosecuted Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. Benjamin Ferencz and William Denson were the young American prosecutors at the immediate postwar trials in Nuremberg and Dachau. My favorite—perhaps precisely because he doesn’t stand out in this crowd—is the scholarly lawyer Fritz Bauer, thanklessly facing his homeland’s ugly record of mass murder as a state attorney general in West Germany. Rafi Eitan, who led the Israeli Mossad team that nabbed Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, cuts a more romantic figure, but Nagorski captures his ordinariness. Beate and Serge Klarsfeld are still at work in France, on the Nazi trail, as is Eli Rosenbaum, who rose to head the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations that belatedly sought to expel war criminals
AMHERST READS featured book: www.amherst.edu/magazine
who were living quietly in the United States. Nagorski eschews any overarching narrative to the works and days of these men and women. They quarreled with each other; they let guilty perpetrators get away; they embraced dubious allies. As a result, there’s no satisfying conclusion after the hodgepodge of criminal trials, international tribunals, public shaming and media ex-
posure that the various pursuers of Nazis conducted. There’s no Happy End, because there’s no satisfying response to the Holocaust, in the end. Movies—and books and TV— demand an ending, a plot that resolves. Nagorski sources our conventional image of the Nazi hunter in movie melodramas such as The Odessa File, Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil and Judgment at Nuremberg. Photograph by Andrey Rudakov
INTERVIEW
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(I wish he had discussed Orson Welles’s noirish The Stranger.) Movies also need stars. Nagorski does well to criticize the popular portrayal of Wiesenthal as the “Jewish James Bond.” Any real Nazi hunter spent more of the last 70 years in dusty archives than on an action-adventure film set. The very use of an epithet like “Nazi hunter” to describe a historical figure might seem to suggest, “Hey, that story would make a good movie.” But it turns out that goodness can be as banal as evil, and Nagorski is admirably prosaic about the real work of the Nazi hunters. His writing is less cinematic, more realistic. What response to the Holocaust could be pleasant to read? Perhaps a narrative of revenge? Even that would be justice: They argued rough many—if not with each most—Nazis walked away other, embraced dubi- and got on their ous allies, let with lives. perpetrators Dame Reget away. becca West, reporting from the 1946 Nuremberg trials, described that courtroom as “a citadel of boredom.” In 1961 Hannah Arendt remarked on the banality of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. A like mood of weary melancholy hangs over The Nazi Hunters, as these dogged men and women get on with their work—more painstaking than derring-do. In the Balkans—another sad corner of Europe between the two world wars—West wrote that it “is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.” Nagorski doesn’t try to mask the lingering stink of Nazi and post-Nazi history. The Nazi Hunters is a gloomy tale, but difficult to forget—and remembering, in the end, provides some comfort. Paul Statt ’78 is a Philadelphiabased writer.
Not a Great Love Story Working backward from a “fever-dream ending,” a former Obama administration speechwriter wrote a novel. | BY NICHOLAS MANCUSI ’10
DAN CLUCHEY ’08 has written speeches for Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius and other senior members of the Obama administration. Now the Harvard Law graduate has published a novel, The Life of the World to Come (St. Martin’s). It examines responsibility and loss through the eyes of a young lawyer trying to save the life of a man on death row while also struggling with the departure of the woman he thought was the love of his life. What sparked this project for you? The first bits that I wrote down were the final pages, which borrowed from some raw, awful writing I had done in David Sofield’s “Writing Poetry” course at Amherst—a handful of syrupy phrases, words and ideas that had somehow gotten stuck either in my mind or on my hard drive. My process was to work backward from that thousand-word feverdream ending, building out a story that could realistically wind up at that place. One of my favorite poems is “This Solitude of Cataracts” by Wallace Stevens. I decided that the entire point of the novel would be to try to make me (and, later, others) feel the way I felt when I first read that poem. My main character, Leo, encounters the poem late in the story, but absent that, I doubt anyone would make the connection explicitly. Is your novel a love story? It’s invested in the idea of love but takes a hard departure from any familiar structure. It’s a story that contains some love—that’s as far as I’d go. If you had a friend who said “I’m interested in reading a great love story,” and you suggested this book, how upset would your friend be with you after reading it? My
guess is that she or he would be pretty furious, to the point of maybe not even texting for a while. Is there any similarity between writing a novel and creating a convincing narrative about a legal case, e.g., for a jury? Most of the same elements are going to be there: characters and conflict and conclusion and whatnot. A good lawyer, though, will successfully shut the door on any interpretation of events that diverges from the one she or he has presented, while a good novelist will often try to open doors of empathy and interpretation for readers to explore. How did you find the creative energy to write a novel while also busy with the vicissitudes of law school and postgraduate life? I wrote the first draft in the four-month window between taking the bar exam and starting my job with the Obama administration; for the most part, the story only had to compete for my time and energy with Breaking Bad and seeing how much Thai food I could eat in one sitting. A good deal of energy went into the editing process later on, so I had some experience with having to make time in my life to work on writing. It was always a break and never a chore, even as my life grew increasingly busy with all those damn vicissitudes. How does writing a novel differ from writing a speech? Every speech has a purpose it is trying to achieve; it may be to persuade, educate, inspire, mobilize, demonize, memorialize. Novels can seek those things, too, but a novel has the luxury of merely being an interesting story. There’s also an element of selfishness to authoring books. In speechwriting, you are required to write in a way that you believe will best reach your audience as they are, whereas there are plenty of novelists who sit down to write with only their own vision and perspective in mind. Speechwriting is a populist public service; novel-writing is whatever the author feels like. Did I catch a secret allusion in the book to my favorite Amherst burrito place? You did. But only because it was proving difficult to slip “hot cheese up front” anywhere into the text where it might be inconspicuous. Summer 2016 Amherst 45
AMHERST CREATES
THAT KIND OF MOTHER Parenting is hard. Most parenting books make it harder. This one will make you feel less alone. | BY ELIZABETH CHILES SHELBURNE ’01 CATASTROPHIC HAPPINESS: FINDING JOY IN CHILDHOOD’S MESSY YEARS By Catherine Newman ’90 Little, Brown and Co.
The prologue is balm for the tired bodies and souls of parents with young children. “One day,” Newman writes, “whenever you arrive somewhere, you will all simply get out of the car and walk inside!”
46 Amherst Summer 2016
MEMOIR U Ah, the Motherhood Industrial Complex. It is vast and allconsuming, between all the books, blogs, hashtags, internet forums, pins, pictures and Facebook posts. Some entries are fascinating and funny, but almost all leave the reader with a bad case of the “less thans.” As in, “I’m less funny than…,” “Less full of love than…,” “Less sober after a hard day’s parenting than….” Catastrophic Happiness is not that. Actually, it’s what all those other mothering books and blogs wish they could be. But be warned: you may find yourself reading it in a coffee shop, surrounded by people on all sides, all of whom slowly edge away as you laugh maniacally and cry helplessly. Also, be careful reading it at night after a hard-won bedtime. You may find yourself drifting, wraithlike, toward your kids’ rooms to wake them up and hug them. And you know how well that’s going to go. Newman is a master of the form: confessional, funny, reflective, observant and full of love for her kids while still able to see and laugh about the insanity of their beings. The prologue, “It Gets Better,” is eight pages of balm for the exhausted, frantic bodies and souls of parents with young children. “One day,” Newman writes, “whenever you arrive somewhere, you will all simply get out of the car and walk inside! You won’t be permanently bent over to deal with the car seat / seat belt / shoes / socks / sippy cups / diapers / turds on the floor.” If you live in this state of permanent stoop, this line washes over you like sunshine after weeks of rain. The book opens when Newman’s children, Birdy and Ben, are 2 and 6 and ends when they are 12 and 16. The chapters are short (so you can feel accomplished about having read two whole chapters before you fall asleep with the lights on at 8:30!), and each reads like a day with a kid. The day starts full of love; insanity ensues, followed by yelling, headshaking and some hilarious comment; and it closes with more love—the kind you feel fully only when your children are asleep, blissfully baby-faced in their beds. She runs through the gamut of modern parenting: tantrums, illnesses, tea parties, peer pressure, guilt, boredom (both yours and theirs),
talking to your kids about sex and, of course, poop. Oh man, the poop talk. It’s both heartening and dismaying to realize that yours are not the only ones obsessed. In a chapter on foraging for food, Newman risks a dip into that pool of smugly satisfied moms who make their own jam, do regular DIY projects and still manage to keep a beautiful home and rear clean, well-mannered children. Just when you think you might murder this woman you previously thought was your new best friend, she writes: “I’m this kind of mother, I think happily, and then immediately flush with shame over my own vanity and falseness, given that I am also the kind of mother who lathers up her hair with one hand so that she doesn’t have to put her beer down in the shower.” This business of parenting, especially in our current age of anxiety, is hard. Most parenting books or blogs serve only to make it harder. Catastrophic Happiness won’t necessarily make parenting easier, but it will make you feel less alone. And it will remind you of the joy, love and inanity of every moment with small kids, without making you feel like a jerk for those (many) times when you forget. Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne ’01 is a writer based in Cambridge, Mass., and the mother of three young children. She is at work on her first novel. Photograph by Ben Newman
AMHERST CREATES
THE LEGACY OF ANITA HILL
CONFIRMATION Written & executiveproduced by Susannah Grant ’84 HBO
Jeffrey Wright ’87 brings his typical gravitas to the role of Charles Ogletree, the lawyer and Harvard professor who initially turned down Anita Hill before eventually agreeing to represent her.
“
TELEVISION U In recent years HBO has perfected the current-events docudrama, with movies such as Recount, Game Change and Too Big to Fail, casting famous faces as other famous (and infamous) faces in re-enactments of notorious news stories. Confirmation continues in that solid tradition, taking on the 1991 Senate hearings to confirm Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice. Written and executive-produced by Susannah Grant ’84 (Erin Brockovich, The Soloist) and directed by Rick Famuyiwa (Dope, The Wood), Confirmation is a straightforward re-creation of events that provides a showcase for some strong performances, especially from star (and fellow executive producer) Kerry Washington as Anita Hill, the law professor who accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Although Washington is clearly the star, and the movie portrays Hill and her struggle to be taken seriously with sympathy and care, Grant and Famuyiwa also resist demonizing Thomas, played by Wendell Pierce of The Wire and Treme. There’s no smoking gun in Confirmation, no dramatized moment that makes a definitive statement about the relationship between Hill and Thomas. The movie never flashes back to their time working together, and indeed never shows them directly interacting at all. Instead, it represents both of their perspectives through vehement public statements, and it shows them remaining just as vehement in private, Hill maintaining her quiet dignity and Thomas They porseething with rage over what tray Hill with he believes are false accusasympathy but tions. That’s a fine line to Grant and Famuyiwa resist demon- walk. pull it off by approaching izing Thomas. each character on his or her own terms, from Hill and Thomas to the often craven politicians who used the hearings to forward their political agendas. It’s easy to cringe at the actions of Joe Biden (Greg Kinnear), who easily caved to Republican demands from his position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, or Edward Kennedy (Treat Williams), who refrained from defending Hill against attacks from his fellow senators, but the movie clearly lays out their motivations and personal issues in dialogue and background details. (Biden is humorously nursing a toothache throughout the proceedings.)
FRANK MASI
HBO takes on the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.. | BY JOSH BELL ’02
Jeffrey Wright ’87 (above, left) brings his typical gravitas to the role of Charles Ogletree, a lawyer and Harvard professor who initially turned down Hill before eventually agreeing to represent her, and even he isn’t immune from making assumptions about his client, despite being firmly on her side. Confirmation is less about laying specific blame than about shedding light on the often petty and highly compromised political process. Nearly every character in the movie, including Hill, is deeply cynical about the hearings and the prospect of truth or justice prevailing. At the same time, Grant, Famuyiwa and Washington make it clear that Hill has noble, honest intentions, and her composure in the face of nasty personal attacks is often remarkable. The movie makes ample (sometimes a bit excessive) use of real-life news footage, and it emphasizes the larger ramifications of the hearings. It closes not with updates on what Hill, Thomas or the various politicians have been doing in the years since the hearings, but with statistics about subsequent reports of sexual harassment and footage of women who were elected to Congress following Hill’s testimony. With a degree of distance that other HBO docudramas don’t always have, Confirmation looks back at a divisive, distasteful process and finds the social progress that emerged from the pain. Josh Bell ’02 is film editor of Las Vegas Weekly. Summer 2016 Amherst 47
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TRANSFERRING IN An Amherst-type reunion takes center stage in a new play. | BY KATHERINE DUKE â&#x20AC;&#x2122;05
TH REUNION GUY THE By David Rimmer â&#x20AC;&#x2122;71 LaGuardia Community College
Rimmer is perhaps best known for two plays, New York, about the psychological trauma of 9/11, and Album, which helped launch the careers of Kevin Bacon, Megan Mullally and Jennifer Grey.
48 Amherst Summer 2016
Photograph by Beth Perkins
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THEATER U A local townsperson wanders into reunion weekend at a small college, falls in love with the wife of a ’71 alum, and keeps coming back to the reunion over the next 75 years. The class of 1971 is so taken with this stranger’s peaceful and generous nature that they not only accept him as one of their own but elect him class president. That’s what happens in The Reunion Guy, performed in May at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, N.Y., where playwright David Rimmer ’71 is an adjunct professor. As you might have guessed, he based the play— which he describes as a bittersweet comedy about friendship and loss—on his alma mater’s reunions. Inspiration came in 1994, when he joined his wife, Ellen Sandhaus, at her Smith reunion and then dropped in on the gathering for Amherst’s class of 1969. Amherst’s 2001 reunion featured a reading of his play. Rimmer staged this spring’s LaGuardia production at the school’s Poolside Café. “We put all the audience chairs in the middle of this big room, and we had the action go on all around them, and we made it seem like a reunion,” he says. “We had food and drinks.” Cast and crew included students, faculty and staff, along with a few professional actors. Because LaGuardia is a Inspiration commuter school, Rimmer came in 1994, believes, students don’t neceswhen he sarily form as close an attachdropped in on ment to it as they would to a the Amherst residential school. He wanted The Reunion Guy to exemplify class of ’69. a different kind of school spirit. “In a way,” he says, “I was sort of using Amherst as a positive role model for the way to connect with alumni.” He’s looking into using the play as the basis for an interdisciplinary, forcredit course at the community college. Rimmer is perhaps best known for New York, his 2002 play about the psychological trauma of 9/11, and for Album, his off-Broadway show about teenagers in the 1960s, which was a 1981 Pulitzer Prize finalist and helped to launch the careers of Kevin Bacon, Megan Mullally and Jennifer Grey. Rimmer has shown a short-film version of Album at various festivals and hopes to turn it into a feature-length picture. He’s also working on a new TV series, Murder Avenue, which he sums up as “The Wonder Years meets The Sopranos.” This spring Rimmer helped make a slideshow for his 45-year reunion. As a young man, he says, he didn’t really enjoy reunion—his peers seemed a bit too competitive with one another in terms of money and careers. But at the 25th, he found that people had mellowed with age: “Everyone accepted themselves, they accepted each other, and it was really great.” Ever since then, he’s just kept on coming back. k
REBECCA CLARKE
SHORT TAKES
Whether you need a doctor, a translator or a financial adviser, Amherst alumni and faculty have got you covered. | BY KATHERINE DUKE ’05 Bruce Tulgan ’89 helps with Bridging the Soft Skills Gap (Wiley), and Kimberly Palmer ’01 can turn you into a Smart Mom, Rich Mom: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family (AMACOM). John Hunt ’87, M.D., helps you breathe easy through Your Child’s Asthma: A Guide for Parents (self-published), and Appleton A. Mason III ’64, M.D., takes you on A Physician’s Journey Toward Healing (CreateSpace). Blair Kamin ’79 guides you through the Gates of Harvard Yard (Princeton Architectural Press), and G.A. Mudge ’65 shows you Two Alice Statues in Central Park (Fotobs). With Andrew S. Erickson ’01 and Austin M. Strange, you can spend Six Years at Sea... And Counting: Gulf of Aden Anti-Piracy and China’s Maritime Commons Presence (The Jamestown Foundation). Novelist Évelyne Trouillot and translator Paul Curtis Daw ’68 keep your Memory at Bay (University of Virginia Press). Naoshi Koriyama and Bruce Allen ’71 translate Japanese Tales from Times Past: Stories of Fantasy and Folklore from the Konjaku Monogatari Shu (Tuttle Publishing). Also describing times past are Otto and Peter Schrag ’53, authors of When Europe Was a Prison Camp: Father and Son Memoirs, 1940–1941 (Indianapolis University Press), and Susan Niditch, Amherst’s Samuel Green Professor of Religion, who writes of The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (Yale University Press). Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca L. Stein ’91 have a more modern focus— namely Digital Militarism: Israel’s Occupation in the Social Media Age (Stanford University Press). Albert J. von Frank ’67 edits Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), and John Whittier Treat ’75 traces The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House (Big Table Publishing).
Katherine Duke ’05 is the magazine’s assistant editor. Summer 2016 Amherst 49
SMALL GIFTS ADD UP
Special Section
// CREATING CONNECTIONS // #ALWAYSAMHERST
Your Favorite Places WHEN ALUMNI MADE GIFTS to the Annual Fund in June, we asked them to name their favorite spot on campus and promised to have students send photos of those places. More than 750 alumni sent photo requests with their gifts. Alumni also shared stories—of the Quad, of Memorial Hill, of littleknown campus gems—that show how much this place means to us. Annual Fund gifts support both the people and the place that make Amherst special.
Gifts of $100 or less equaled the equivilent of 9 average financial aid packages.
“KIRBY THEATER is my favorite place at Amherst. My late wife acted in my first produced play there in 1960.” Steven, CLASS OF 1960
“THE OCTAGON: So many memories. A great space for conversations, classes, performances and tears (of joy, sorrow and otherwise). A crucial part of my Amherst experience. Great view as well.” Chad, CLASS OF 1997
“DEFINITELY A LOT OF MY HOURS, and most of my mental capabilities, were spent in the physics lounge in the basement of Merrill Science Center!” Brian, CLASS OF 2005
www.amherst.edu/alumni | alumni@amherst.edu
“I SPENT A LOT OF TIME rehearsing and performing with the Zumbyes and Concert Choir. Nothing was more thrilling than to look out from the stage of Buckley Recital Hall at a full house.” Jonathan, CLASS OF 1995
50
Amherst SUMMER 2016
Thank You from the Annual Fund VIEW FROM ATOP JOHNSON CHAPEL: “When Alpha Delt had the campus mail route, one of our late afternoon responsibilties was to take down the American flag from the top of the Chapel.” Edward, CLASS OF 1966
Total number of Annual Fund donors
ALL GIFTS, OF ALL AMOUNTS, help Amherst students and faculty. Gifts to the Annual Fund allow the College to fund immediate priorities year after year: scholarships for talented students, resources for our faculty and support for maintaining a beautiful campus. Thank you to all donors and volunteers who contributed to the success of this year’s Annual Fund.
$9.6 million Amount raised by the Annual Fund in the 2016 fiscal year
“THE BIRD SANCTUARY was a sanctuary for me, too. I sought the quiet and solitude of the trails. The modest explorations they offered were small but precious reminders of home.” Alex, CLASS OF 1996
10,963
What did your Annual Fund gift support this year? Financial aid that made an Amherst education possible for 58% of current students Additional funding for 164 internships, allowing students to accept unpaid or underpaid summer internships
Amherst recognizes GEORGE E. BRIA ’38 for 77 years of continuous giving, followed by LAURENCE C. GRISEMER ’40, M.D., WILLIAM E. REDEKER ’40 and the late DAVID M. HILDRETH ’39, each with 75 years HANK PEARSALL ’56 and his class for a 100% participation rate. This is the sixth time the class has reached 100%. The CLASS OF 1991 for more than doubling its giving record to beat the College’s all-time 25th reunion high. ’91 also broke its own participation rate.
50.6 percentage of alumni who participated in the Annual Fund
Support for 200+ fulltime faculty dedicated to teaching, scholarship and research Facilities and the faculty or staff support that allowed 115+ student organizations and 25 varsity athletic teams to flourish Maintenance and upkeep for a beautiful and historic campus, located on 1,000 acres
“POOR LITTLE Barrett Hall. I was a French major. My grandparents met there at a tea dance when it used to be the gym. (She was Smith. He was Amherst.)” Catherine, CLASS OF 1980
Opportunities, resources and space for 800+ classes (90% of those with fewer than 30 students)
The 10 youngest classes ALL finished ahead of last year in participation and donor count. The CLASS OF 2007 had the highest participation rate for these classes. The CLASS OF 2006 had the largest participation increase (6.4%).
PROFILES IN PHILANTRHOPY
Special Section
www.amherst.edu/alumni | alumni@amherst.edu
At Amherst, 60 percent of the budget every year is rooted in philanthropy.
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Amherst SUMMER 2016
// CREATING CONNECTIONS //
JOHN E. KIRKPATRICK ’51
Six Decades of Support It began with a $5 gift after graduating. It continues with a transformative investment today.
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MHERST ALUMNI share an intimate and invested relationship with the College, but few can match John E. Kirkpatrick ’51, who has given continuously to the Alumni Fund for going on 65 years. Beginning with a gift of $5 just after graduating, Kirkpatrick’s dedicated service and support to Amherst span more than six decades.
It all began when the young Kirkpatrick was finishing high school in Meadville, Pa., his hometown and the home of Allegheny College, which his parents, older brother and various uncles and cousins had all attended. He wanted something different. His high school guidance counselor gave him a stack of college brochures; when he saw Amherst’s, he thought, That’s the place for me. “After I was accepted, my father decided we should go take a look,” Kirkpatrick says. “We drove the 500 miles to campus in mid-June. Dean Wilson showed us around. I was impressed.” Kirkpatrick, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, was one of Amherst’s first American studies majors. “American studies was a real window into the liberal arts—I took courses in American history, economics, political science, literature and the sciences—and my professors were brilliant men,” he says. The critical and ethical thinking he learned from them led him to Harvard Law School and a long, successful career as a partner at the Chicago-based law firm now known as Kirkland & Ellis, where his work focused on the corporate, trust and estate fields. Kirkpatrick frequently returns to Amherst. “Our class has a lot of esprit de corps and many continuing friendships,” he says. “This has made coming back to Amherst important.” He has done more than that. In 1999, Kirkpatrick and his wife, Phyllis, established the John E. Kirkpatrick 1951 Professorship Fund. Currently held by David W. Wills, the Kirkpatrick Professorship is awarded to a distinguished faculty member whose teaching and scholarship include the interdisciplinary investigation of law, religion, philosophy and society, with an emphasis on ethics and a focus on the United States. Kirkpatrick is also a Johnson Chapel Associate and a member of the Founders Society and Noah Webster Photograph by Jeffery Salter
Circle. He led the Amherst Club of Chicago and has been a class agent, planned gifts chair and campaign volunteer, among other roles. Currently, he serves as reunion gift chair for the class of 1951, a role he has held or shared for several milestone reunions, setting the standard for all 60th and 65th reunion classes in both dollars raised and participation. The class’s 65th reunion gift exceeded $9.5 million. Beyond Amherst, Kirkpatrick serves on the board of directors of several charities and a large Chicagoheadquartered multinational corporation in addition to being active in the administration of and fundraising for his church. He and Phyllis have three children, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Kirkpatrick’s enduring legacy continues with a new, transformative investment in the College in honor of his 65th reunion. He forged his own path when he chose Amherst, and the College is better for the long, dynamic and engaged journey that has ensued. “My Amherst education and the years I spent there contributed hugely to the person I have become,” he says. “My gifts to Amherst are not just repaying a debt—they are expressing my gratitude and thanksgiving for being an Amherst man. And I want Amherst to continue its mission of providing a most superior educational experience to its students.”
“I want Amherst to continue its mission of providing a most superior educational experience to its students,” Kirkpatrick says.
LARRY KAHN ’68, P’97
Bringing in the Light At the new Science Center, the Larry and Susan Kahn Winter Garden will forge connections with the physical landscape.
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MHERST graduates are often extolled for their ability to connect seemingly disparate ideas and experiences, and the life of S. Lawrence Kahn III ’68, P’97 is a textbook example of this valuable capacity. After majoring in European studies with a minor in Russian literature at Amherst, Kahn enrolled in Navy Officer Candidate School and served in Japan and Vietnam. Then he went straight from the Mekong Delta to graduate school at Harvard. With an MBA in hand, Kahn began a career in contracting and real estate that led to his founding of Lowell Homes Inc., a developer and builder of residential communities throughout South Florida.
This aptitude for synthesis and bigpicture understanding may be why Kahn—neither a scientist nor a science major—has been one of the earliest and most dedicated supporters of Amherst’s new Science Center, slated to open in 2018. “A strong program in the sciences is essential to a liberal arts education, and to preparing students to be successful in today’s world,” he says. “This building is so important—the rigor of its programs and the excellence of the research and scholarship we’ll develop there are essential to Amherst’s future.” In honor of his 50th reunion, Kahn Photograph by Jeffery Salter
Though neither a scientist nor a science major, Kahn has been one of the most dedicated supporters of Amherst’s new Science Center.
and his wife, Susan, a journalist and columnist for Miami Today, have made a gift to name the Science Center’s Winter Garden, a key outdoor space within a building that aims to forge strong connections with the physical landscape. “In my business, we’ve built thousands of homes, and one of the princi-
ples that always guides us is bringing in as much natural light as possible,” says Kahn. “That’s what drew us to the Winter Garden.” This year-round, tree-filled green space for reading, relaxing and social interaction will be known as the Larry and Susan Kahn Winter Garden. Kahn has been a longtime volunteer for Amherst. Most recently, he has hosted receptions for President Biddy Martin in Florida and serves as class vice president. “I am such a big fan of Amherst, and it is a pleasure to be a constant supporter,” he says. For more on the Science Center, please see amherst.edu/go/greenway.
VOLUNTEERS IN 2015–16
Special Section
www.amherst.edu/alumni | alumni@amherst.edu
3,612 alumni mentored students, served as class officers or gave time in other ways.
54
Amherst SUMMER 2015
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// CREATING CONNECTIONS //
etween classes, coursework, reading assignments, clubs, sports and part-time jobs, Amherst students don’t have much downtime. It’s hard to imagine how a group of students could devote weeks of their spare time to writing code and creating a trading algorithm just because it sounded like an interesting challenge. Yet this spring, four Amherst students did just that by participating in the University of Chicago Midwest Trading Competition. In its fourth year, the competition combines computer science and finance—a blend of two seemingly unrelated fields that is becoming essential to market success. The Amherst team traveled to Chicago for three days to compete, meet like-minded students and network with finance companies.
CAREER CENTER
Learning Inside Out Expanded programs are helping students connect their liberal arts education to their future careers.
Leading up to the event, the team built algorithms and used quantitative finance in three realworld case studies. At the event, their algorithmic programs were set into action in a simulation of the real market using OptionsCity, a vendor-based software product commonly used by traders and market participants
worldwide. The team saw how their algorithms performed against their competitors’. The Amherst team—three sophomores and a junior, with majors in math, history, computer science and film and media studies—placed second in one case study and sixth overall against 25 teams from the likes of Harvard and MIT. The students also spent several hours visiting PEAK6, an investment firm helmed by Matt Hulsizer ’91 and Bradley Goldberg ’91. Launched in 1997, PEAK6 was one of the first to develop sophisticated technology that efficiently manages risk in the options market. Hulsizer and Goldberg funded the students’ travel. Because of that generosity, the students were able to concentrate
During the New York City finance trek, 12 sophomores visited 14 employers, took part in networking receptions and met many alumni working in business and finance. It “convinced me there is more to the culture of this industry than first meets the eye,” said one student.
on creating algorithms rather than worrying about expenses. “Amherst teaches lifelong skills and pushes you to think and look at a problem from multiple angles. It was instrumental in my career trajectory, and it was exciting to meet some students and see that same love of learning and exploration at work,” says Hulsizer. “I learned from my teammates and from our competition, but I also learned about career options in finance and how the industry is evolving to meet global market needs,” says Nicholas Marsh ’18. Tobias Schwed ’18 adds, “It’s exciting to think of all the ways we can use data to inform our choices, and not just in the market. I love this work, and I’m excited to see what I can do with it at Amherst and beyond.”
Career Advice, on Location THE MIDWEST TRADING COMPETItion wasn’t the only chance for offcampus, experiential learning this year. The Career Center organized four industry-specific career treks. During each, students traveled to a major U.S. city for employer site visits and meetings with alumni in the field. Each highly selective trek had 12 spots available, with all expenses paid by generous alumni or grant and College support. The treks are part of the “Amherst Careers In” programs—industry-specific initiatives providing personalized career advising and opportunities to meet alumni and potential employers. There are seven Careers In programs. Amherst’s strong alumni network sets them apart: This year, during treks and other travel events, more than 50 alumni invited students to workplace site visits. Well over 150 alumni met with students during discussion sessions and networking events. Alumni offered invaluable insights and advice, and students explored career “ecosystems”—the intersection of finance, technology and entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, for example—and tested assumptions in a variety of workplaces.
The innovation trek (top) introduced students to careers in Silicon Valley. The trek to Washington, D.C., and Annapolis, Md., showed students how the liberal arts can prepare them for careers in nonprofit and government work.
A New Kind of Alumni Networking THE CAREER CENTER HAS INcreased its advising and programming in response to both the job market and a new generation of students. Traditional alumni networks have been changing for decades, becoming wider, more transparent and more formal. Amherst is particularly interested in developing ways for minority and first-generation students to connect with alumni and graduate with significant professional and personal networks in place. The Career Center’s Pathways program, launched in 2013, facilitates structured mentoring. This fall, it is expanding to offer alumni and students several ways to connect through ongoing formal mentorships, quick discovery
The Pathways mentoring program is expanding to offer several new ways for alumni and students to connect .
conversations and job shadowing. “The new program design will allow alumni and students to choose the level of time commitment that works for them,” says Career Center director Emily Griffen. “It will also give students additional ways to explore potential career interests and customize their learning,” and will make it easier for students to find alumni based on a host of criteria. “The way Amherst students think is different from how a professional-school student is trained, and that’s incredibly beneficial,” adds the Career Center’s Stephanie Hockman. “Amherst teaches students to think broadly and globally, to be adaptive and creative, to be leaders. We help students explore their interests, gain practical skills, land their first job and leverage their education into the career they want.” k
VOICES
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refused to print a word in its main section (as opposed to mentions by class secretaries in the class notes) that Mr. MacNaughton and Gordon Hall ’52 have not only published a detailed historical booklet but posted it (for free) at www. lordjefferyamherst.com. Those who hoped for a well-reasoned, thoroughly researched, well-informed discussion on Lord Jeff ? NO such luck. Again, that should trouble every alumnus and alumna. DICK HUBERT ’60 Rye Brook, N.Y. DIVERSITY AT AMHERST The Winter 2016 issue said that Amherst had received a $1.5 million grant to “adapt liberal arts education to a new population of students and changing circumstances,” noting that 43 percent of students “identify themselves as students of color.” We are celebrating diversity and being rewarded for it. But are there unintended consequences? As a hospital physician, I have the privilege to witness astounding diversity. I treat all manner of races, sexual orientations, religions, political persuasions, economic backgrounds, social strata and educational levels. During crises of illness, differences fade and the sameness of the human condition emerges. All patients want to be healthy and vital, to see their loved ones and children prosper, to be respected, to feel useful, to do things they love. We are all the same underneath our skin, our facades, our fashion, our party affiliation and our positions in life. From this perspective, I have come to realize that efforts to promote diversity can actually be antithetical to the unifying concept that we are all humans striving in the same world. In order to separate us into defined groups so that we can “prove” how diverse we are, we must notice and magnify differences rather than similarities. Honestly reviewed, celebration and promotion of particular groups was done by oppressors throughout history, and that did not serve us well. What I’d like to see is an Amherst that doesn’t care about color, gender, religion or other categories; an Amherst that promotes excellence and merit regardless of group; and an admission process that ig-
nores ethnic, racial and economic background, looking only at accomplishment and raw potential, and then randomly admits qualified prospects. I believe that ideal should be our ultimate goal. Highlighting differences, while possibly useful in the short term, will not help us long term. JIM FULMER ’76 Jacksonville, Fla. MASCOT ANAGRAMS Now that Field Marshal Jeffery Amherst has been dishonorably discharged as Amherst College’s mascot, the College is faced with choosing a new mascot. In this mission anagrams can help. An anagram for Amherst is hamster. The Amherst Hamsters: not bad. Of course, the H in Hamsters should be silent, as it is in Amherst. Another anagram, Smart, eh?, could be worked into a cheer. Turning to Williams, one need only start near the end of Williams, double back to the beginning and proceed from there. The result: I am swill. But when it comes to anagrammatic team names, nobody beats Swarthmore. Go, Earthworms! DAVID SONSTROEM ’58 Storrs, Conn. DEFINITELY NOT THE ZUMBYES Your Spring 2016 issue includes a “1958 photo” of a group called “the Zumbyes.” First, the group was the DQ, not the Zumbyes. DQ stands for “Double Quartet.” We referred to our rivals, the upstart Zumbyes, as a pocket glee club: they had something like 14 members. Second, the photo could not have been taken in 1958. The members of the DQ, left to right, were Jim Vernon ’57, Pete Walsh ’57, Ned Edwards ’56, Bobby Grant ’55, Burkart Runser ’55, Ben Symon ’57, Mark Ball ’56 and Crayton Bedford ’56. My recollection is that our audiences were more attentive and enthusiastic than the diners in your photo. But that could be just a trick of memory. MARK BALL ’56 Haverford, Pa. Nothing could be further from the truth than your description of the picture. It is not the Zumbyes that are singing, but the Amherst DQ, the venerable double quartet born in the 1920s and known for their
tattersol vests, black knit ties and gray flannel suits. The picture was taken in spring 1955 when the DQ was entertaining the board of trustees. Three of the ’56 singers—Mark Ball, Crayton Bedford and Ned Edwards—attended and sang at our 60th reunion. NED EDWARDS ’56 Beulah, Mich. qThank you to all who told us that the singers were not the Zumbyes. Also, thank you to Andrew Scholtz ’50 for correcting the record about the photo on page 69 of the Spring issue. It shows students from the class of ’50. –Editors GIVE US AN A! You gave me a quick and easy research project! On page 55 of the Spring issue you ask whether there were additional cheerleaders not shown in the “Give Us an A!” photo. My late parents left cartons of memorabilia awaiting my attention, and I consulted the 1942 Olio belonging to my father, Robert ’42. There, on page 16, is the same photo, along with this text: “This year there were four cheerleaders: Head Cheerleader Bill McNamee; Bill Simons, Gerrit Roelofs and Ed Koenig.” Rarely do I find a challenge met with such seemingly unambiguous satisfaction! ROGER GIES ’69 Richmond, Calif. IS THAT ME? HOPE NOT Although I’m not 100 percent sure, I think the class on page 93 (Spring 2016) was “Marx and the Marxists,” and the professor (facing away from the camera) was Jerome Himmelstein. Is that me talking in the center? I hope not, but I’m afraid it might be. I remember feeling proud of myself for managing to get through the first volume of Capital, but also feeling extraordinarily frustrated because I understood so little of it (an obstacle that has never prevented me from holding forth). I think Marx and I were not a good match. I remember that the material of the course was challenging to me, and Professor Himmelstein was generous, patient and kind. He tried to help me. And I was not easy to help. BENIGNO TRIGO ’84 Nashville, Tenn. Summer 2016 Amherst 127
AMHERST MADE
THE FATHER OF
PHOTOJOURNALISM An 1897 alumnus turned National Geographic into a “picture book.”
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n 1899 Amherst professor Edwin Grosvenor received a letter that would change the way millions of people see the world. The letter was a job offer of sorts from Alexander Graham Bell, president of the National Geographic Society, who asked if either of the professor’s twin sons would like to be managing editor of the society’s magazine. With no editorial experience, one of those twins, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, class of 1897, became the only paid employee of National Geographic, according to a profile in the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly. Before mailing his first issue, he addressed it by hand himself. In 1905 the young editor (by now Bell’s son-in-law) filled 11 magazine pages with photos of Lhasa, Tibet. “Expecting to be fired, he
Grosvenor at work in 1914
128 Amherst Summer 2016
is instead congratulated,” reads a timeline on nationalgeographic.com. But in 1906, when he published “pioneering flash photographs of animals at night,” the timeline says, two board members “resign in disgust, claiming magazine is turning into a ‘picture book.’” With Grosvenor at the helm, National Geographic was the first magazine to publish natural-color underwater and aerial photos. He put a premium on technical excellence and is now credited as the father of photojournalism. As The New York Times wrote in his obituary, Grosvenor created “a magic carpet that carried its readers vicariously to the wondrous and adventurous places on the earth.” Or, in the words of the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly, “One of the newer picture magazines recently boasted that it had discovered a new world, but before some of its editors were born Gilbert Grosvenor understood and accepted as a cardinal editorial principle the importance of pictures.” It’s unclear what became of the two board members who resigned. Perhaps they moved on to the Amherst quarterly, whose November 1940 issue—the one that profiles Grosvenor—includes only five images in 92 pages. EMILY GOLD BOUTILIER
In 1917, Grosvenor’s photographers introduced readers to little-known supporters of the war effort: the female munition workers in England (top left) and France (above).
National Geographic published captivating visuals of the “Wake Up, America!” parade held in New York City on April 19, 1917, two weeks after the U.S. declared war on Germany.
PATHWAYS MENTORING PROGRAM EXPANDS PATHWAYS, Amherst College’s alumni-student mentoring program, provides an opportunity for students and alumni to engage in a learning partnership centered on students’ academic, professional and life goals.
HERE’S WHAT STUDENTS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT PATHWAYS: “My Pathways mentor had a profound impact on my views of my future career. He helped me balance different offers and make decisions, and directed me to a variety of opportunities.”
The program will now offer alumni and students several ways to connect, depending on student learning objectives and level of possible time commitment: C Ongoing mentormentee relationships C 30-minute quick conversations C On-site job shadow days
“My Pathways mentor played a crucial part in helping me shape my career direction and academic interests and become more confident in networking.” HERE’S WHAT ALUMNI HAVE TO SAY ABOUT PATHWAYS: “My mentee is an extraordinary young woman who taught me as much as I may have taught her. Our discussions were wideranging, both personal and intellectual.”
Nearly 1,000 Pathways relationships have formed to date. LUC MELANSON
“This is a terrific way to link students with interested alumni. I have enjoyed participating in the program and hopefully have provided some insight. I also love hearing about the current culture of the College from an unfiltered perspective.”
Visit amherst.edu/go/pathways
AMHERST PO Box 5000 Amherst, MA 01002
“MY PROCESS WAS TO WORK backward from that thousand-word
“I AM A LAWYER BY HAND AND AN ACADEMIC AT
fever-dream ending.”
HEART.”
Dan Cluchey ’08, Page 45
Chaka Laguerre, Page 40
“NAZI HUNTERS,
“Everybody should be able to try life
ALONG WITH THE HUNTED, WILL SOON ONLY EXIST IN OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORIES.”
WITHOUT SCHOOL.”
Andrew Nagorski ’69, Page 44
Ken Danford ’88, Page 39